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CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE 
SOCIAL   CRISIS 


•j^^y^ 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE 
SOCIAL  CRISIS 


BY 


WALTER   RAUSCHENBUSCH 

PROFESSOR  OF  CHURCH  HISTORY  IN  ROCHESTER  THEOLOGICAL 
SEMINARY 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON :   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1907 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1907, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotypcd.    Published  March,  1907. 


Nadooot)  l@xt99 

J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


THE  WOMEN   WHO  HAVE   LOVED   ME 

MY   MOTHER 

MY  SISTERS   FRIDA  AND    EMMA 

MY   DEAR  WIFE   PAULINE 

AND 

MY   LITTLE  DAUGHTERS  WINIFRED  AND  ELIZABETH 

THIS  BOOK 

IS  LOVINGLY  INSCRIBED 


THY  KINGDOM  COMEf 
THY  WILL  BE  DONE    ON  EARTH! 


CONTENTS 

'pack 
INTRODUCTION xi 

CHAPTER   I 

The  Historical  Roots  of  Christianity:  The  Hebrew 
Prophets 

Historical  importance  of  the  prophets.  Their  religion  ethical 
and  therefore  social.  Their  morality  public  and  not  private. 
Their  sympathy  with  the  oppressed.  The  effect  of  their  social 
interest  on  their  religious  development.  Later  religious  indi- 
vidualism a  triumph  of  faith,  but  not  pure  gain.  The  prophetic 
hope  of  social  perfection.  The  "  pessimism"  of  the  prophets. 
Summary i 

CHAPTER   II 
The  Social  Aims  of  Jesus 


The  new  social  interpretation  of  the  gospel.  Jesus  not  a  social 
reformer,  but  a  religious  initiator.  Significance  of  his  relations 
to  John  the  Baptist.  The  kingdom  of  God  his  aim  ;  its  pre- 
vious meaning ;  his  changes  in  the  ideal ;  the  persistence  of 
its  social  essence.  The  ethics  of  the  new  society.  Christ's 
indifference  to  ritual  and  his  insistence  on  social  morality. 
His  teachings  on  wealth.  His  social  affinities.  His  revolu- 
tionary consciousness 44 

CHAPTER   III 
The  Social  Impetus  of  Primitive  Christianity 

The  probability  of  a  gap  between  Jesus  and  his  followers.  The 
limitations  of  our  information.     The  hope  of  the  comins  of 


Vm  CONTENTS 

PAGB 

'  the  Lord.  The  revolutionary  character  of  the  millennial  hope. 
The  political  consciousness  of  Christians.  The  society-mak- 
ing force  of  primitive  Christianity.  The  so-called  communism 
at  Jerusalem.  The  primitive  churches  as  fraternal  communi- 
ties. The  leaven  of  Christian  democracy.  The  outcome  of 
the  discussion       . 93 

CHAPTER   IV 

Why  has  Christianity  never  Undertaken  the  Work 
OF  Social  Reconstruction? 

The  problem  stated.  Impossibility  of  any  social  propaganda  in 
the  first  centuries.  Postponement  to  the  Lord's  coming. 
Hostility  to  the  Empire  and  its  civilization.  The  limitations 
of  primitive  Christianity  and  their  perpetuation.  The  other- 
worldliness  of  Christianity.  The  ascetic  tendency.  Monas- 
ticism.  Sacramentalism.  The  dogmatic  interest.  The 
churchliness  of  Christianity.  Subservience  to  the  State. 
The  disappearance  of  church  democracy.  The  lack  of  sci- 
entific comprehension  of  social  development.  Results  of  the 
discussion.  The  passing  of  these  causes  in  modern  life. 
Conclusion 143 

CHAPTER  V 

The  Present  Crisis 

A  prelude.  The  industrial  revolution.  The  land  and  the  people. 
Work  and  wages.  The  morale  of  the  workers.  The  physi- 
cal decline  of  the  people.  The  wedge  of  inequality.  The 
crumbling  of  political  democracy.  The  tainting  of  the  moral 
atmosphere.  The  undermining  of  the  family.  The  fell  or 
the  rise  of  Christian  civilization 211 

CHAPTER  VI 

The  Stake  of  the  Church  in  the  Social  Movement 

The  purpose  of  this  chapter.  The  Church  and  its  real  estate. 
The  Church  and  its  income.    The  volunteer  workers  of  the 


CONTENTS  IX 

PAGE 

Church.  The  supply  and  spirit  of  the  ministry.  The  Church 
and  poverty.  The  Church  and  its  human  material.  The 
hostile  ethics  of  commercialism.  Christian  civilization  and 
foreign  missions.  The  Church  and  the  working  class. 
The  forward  call  to  the  Church 287 

CHAPTER  VII 

What  to  Do 

"No  thoroughfare."  Social  repentance  and  faith.  Social  evan- 
gelization. The  pulpit  and  the  social  question.  The  Chris- 
tian conception  of  life  and  property.  The  creation  of 
customs  and  institutions.  Stewardship  and  ownership. 
Solidarity  and  communism.  The  upward  movement  of  the 
working  class.  Summary  of  the  argument.  The  new  aposto- 
late  343 


INTRODUCTION 

Western  civilization  is  passing  through  a  social  revolu- 
tion unparalleled  in  history  for  scope  and  power.  Its  com- 
ing was  inevitable.  The  religious,  political,  and  intellectual 
revolutions  of  the  past  five  centuries,  which  together 
created  the  modern  world,  necessarily  had  to  culminate 
in  an  economic  and  social  revolution  such  as  is  now 
upon  us. 

By  universal  consent,  this  social  crisis  is  the  overshad- 
owing problem  of  our  generation.  The  industrial  and 
commercial  life  of  the  advanced  nations  are  in  the  throes 
of  it.  In  politics  all  issues  and  methods  are  undergoing 
upheaval  and  re-ahgnment  as  the  social  movement  ad- 
vances. In  the  world  of  thought  all  the  young  and  serious 
minds  are  absorbed  in  the  solution  of  the  social  problems. 
Even  literature  and  art  point  like  compass-needles  to  this 
magnetic  pole  of  all  our  thought. 

The  social  revolution  has  been  slow  in  reaching  our 
country.  We  have  been  exempt,  not  because  we  had 
solved  the  problems,  but  because  we  had  not  yet  confronted 
them.  We  have  now  arrived,  and  all  the  characteristic 
conditions  of  American  life  will  henceforth  combine  to 
make  the  social  struggle  here  more  intense  than  anywhere 
else.  The  vastness  and  the  free  sweep  of  our  concentrated 
wealth  on  the  one  side,  the  independence,  intelligence, 
moral  vigor,  and  political  power  of  the  common  people  on 


XU  INTRODUCTION 

the  other  side,  promise  a  long-drawn  grapple  of  contesting 
forces  which  may  well  make  the  heart  of  every  American 
patriot  sink  within  him. 

It  is  realized  by  friend  and  foe  that  religion  can  play, 
and  must  play,  a  momentous  part  in  this  irrepressible 
conflict. 

The  Church,  the  organized  expression  of  the  religious 
life  of  the  past,  is  one  of  the  most  potent  institutions  and 
forces  in  Western  civilization.  Its  favor  and  moral  influ- 
ence are  wooed  by  all  parties.  It  cannot  help  throwing 
its  immense  weight  on  one  side  or  the  other.  If  it  tries 
not  to  act,  it  thereby  acts ;  and  in  any  case  its  choice  will 
be  decisive  for  its  own  future. 

Apart  from  the  organized  Church,  the  religious  spirit  is 
a  factor  of  incalculable  power  in  the  making  of  history. 
In  the  idealistic  spirits  that  lead  and  in  the  masses  that 
follow,  the  religious  spirit  always  intensifies  thought,  en- 
larges hope,  unfetters  daring,  evokes  the  willingness  to 
sacrifice,  and  gives  coherence  in  the  fight.  Under  the 
warm  breath  of  religious  faith,  all  social  institutions  become 
plastic.  The  religious  spirit  removes  mountains  and 
tramples  on  impossibilities.  Unless  the  economic  and 
intellectual  factors  are  strongly  reenforced  by  religious 
enthusiasm,  the  whole  social  movement  may  prove  abor- 
tive, and  the  New  Era  may  die  before  it  comes  to  birth. 

It  follows  that  the  relation  between  Christianity  and  the 
social  crisis  is  one  of  the  most  pressing  questions  for  all 
intelligent  men  who  reaUze  the  power  of  religion,  and 
most  of  all  for  the  religious  leaders  of  the  people  who  give 
direction  to  the  forces  of  religion. 

The  question  has,  in  fact,  been  discussed  frequently  and 
earnestly,  but  it  is  plain  to  any  thoughtful  observer  that 


INTRODUCTION  XIU 

the  common  mind  of  the  Christian  Church  in  America  has 
not  begun  to  arrive  at  any  solid  convictions  or  any  perma- 
nent basis  of  action.  The  conscience  of  Christendom  is 
halting  and  groping,  perplexed  by  contradicting  voices, 
still  poorly  informed  on  essential  questions,  justly  reluctant 
to  part  with  the  treasured  maxims  of  the  past,  and  yet 
conscious  of  the  imperious  call  of  the  future. 

This  book  is  to  serve  as  a  contribution  to  this  discussion. 
Its  first  chapters  are  historical,  for  nothing  is  more  needed 
than  a  true  comprehension  of  past  history  if  we  are  to 
forecast  the  future  correctly  and  act  wisely  in  the  present. 
I  have  tried  to  set  forth  the  religious  development  of  the 
prophets  of  Israel,  the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus,  and 
the  dominant  tendencies  of  primitive  Christianity,  in  order 
to  ascertain  what  was  the  original  and  fundamental  pur- 
pose of  the  great  Christian  movement  in  history.  Every 
discussion  of  the  question  which  appeals  to  history  has  to 
cover  this  ground,  but  usually  only  detached  fragments 
of  the  material  are  handled  at  all,  and  often  without  insight 
adequate  to  give  their  true  meaning  even  to  these  frag- 
ments. I  am  in  hopes  that  these  chapters  will  contribute 
some  facts  and  points  of  view  that  have  not  yet  become 
common  property. 

The  outcome  of  these  first  historical  chapters  is  that 
the  essential  purpose  of  Christianity  was  to  transform 
human  society  into  the  kingdom  of  God  by  regenerating 
all  human  relations  and  reconstituting  them  in  accord- 
ance with  the  will  of  God.  The  fourth  chapter  raises  the 
question  why  the  Christian  Church  has  never  undertaken 
to  carry  out  this  fundamental  purpose  of  its  existence. 
I  have  never  met  with  any  previous  attempt  to  give  a 
satisfactory  historical  explanation   of  this   failure,  and    I 


XIV  INTRODUCTION 

regard  this  chapter  as  one  of  the  most  important  in  the 
book. 

The  fifth  chapter  sets  forth  the  conditions  which  con- 
stitute the  present  social  crisis  and  which  imperatively 
demand  of  Christianity  that  contribution  of  moral  and 
religious  power  which  it  was  destined  to  furnish. 

The  sixth  chapter  points  out  that  the  Church,  as  such, 
has  a  stake  in  the  social  movement.  The  Church  owns 
property,  needs  income,  employs  men,  works  on  human 
material,  and  banks  on  its  moral  prestige.  Its  present 
efficiency  and  future  standing  are  bound  up  for  weal  or 
woe  with  the  social  welfare  of  the  people  and  with  the 
outcome  of  the  present  struggle. 

The  last  chapter  suggests  what  contributions  Christianity 
can  make  and  in  what  main  directions  the  religious  spirit 
should  exert  its  force. 

In  covering  so  vast  a  field  of  history  and  in  touching  on 
such  a  multitude  of  questions,  error  and  incompleteness 
are  certain,  and  the  writer  can  claim  only  that  he  has  tried 
to  do  honest  work.  Moreover,  it  is  impossible  to  handle 
questions  so  vital  to  the  economic,  the  social,  and  the  moral 
standing  of  great  and  antagonistic  classes  of  men,  without 
jarring  precious  interests  and  convictions,  and  without 
giving  men  the  choice  between  the  bitterness  of  social 
repentance  and  the  bitterness  of  moral  resentment.  I  can 
frankly  affirm  that  I  have  written  with  malice  toward  none 
and  with  charity  for  all.  Even  where  I  judge  men  to  have 
done  wrong,  I  find  it  easy  to  sympathize  with  them  in  the 
temptations  which  made  the  wrong  almost  inevitable,  and 
in  the  points  of  view  in  which  they  intrench  themselves 
to  save  their  self-respect.  I  have  tried  —  so  far  as  err- 
ing human  judgment  permits  —  to  lift  the  issues  out  of  the 


INTRODUCTION  XV 

plane  of  personal  selfishness  and  hate,  and  to  put  them 
where  the  white  light  of  the  just  and  pitying  spirit  of 
Jesus  can  play  upon  them.  If  I  have  failed  in  that  effort, 
it  is  my  sin.  If  others  in  reading  fail  to  respond  in  the 
same  spirit,  it  is  their  sin.  In  a  few  years  all  our  restless 
and  angry  hearts  will  be  quiet  in  death,  but  those  who 
come  after  us  will  live  in  the  world  which  our  sins  have 
blighted  or  which  our  love  of  right  has  redeemed.  Let 
us  do  our  thinking  on  these  great  questions,  not  with  our 
eyes  fixed  on  our  bank  account,  but  with  a  wise  outlook  on 
the  fields  of  the  future  and  with  the  consciousness  that  the 
spirit  of  the  Eternal  is  seeking  to  distil  from  our  lives  some 
essence  of  righteousness  before  they  pass  away. 

I  have  written  this  book  to  discharge  a  debt.  For 
eleven  years  I  was  pastor  among  the  working  people  on 
the  West  Side  of  New  York  City.  I  shared  their  life  as 
well  as  I  then  knew,  and  used  up  the  early  strength  of  my 
life  in  their  service.  In  recent  years  my  work  has  been 
turned  into  other  channels,  but  I  have  never  ceased  to  feel 
that  I  owe  help  to  the  plain  people  who  were  my  friends. 
If  this  book  in  some  far-off  way  helps  to  ease  the  pressure 
that  bears  them  down  and  increases  the  forces  that  bear 
them  up,  I  shall  meet  the  Master  of  my  life  with  better 
confidence. 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE   SOCIAL 
CRISIS 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  HISTORICAL  ROOTS   OF  CHRISTIANITY:    THE  HEBREW 
PROPHETS 

It  seems  a  long  start  to  approach  the  most  modem 
problems  by  talking  of  men  who  lived  before  Lycurgus  and 
Solon  gave  laws  to  Sparta  and  Athens.  What  light  can  we 
get  on  the  troubles  of  the  great  capitalistic  republic  of  the 
West  from  men  who  tended  sheep  in  Judea  or  meddled  in 
the  petty  politics  of  the  Semitic  tribes  ? 

History  is  never  antiquated,  because  humanity  is  always 
fundamentally  the  same.  It  is  always  hungry  for  bread, 
sweaty  with  labor,  struggling  to  wrest  from  nature  and 
hostile  men  enough  to  feed  its  children.  The  welfare  of  the 
mass  is  always  at  odds  with  the  selfish  force  of  the  strong. 
The  exodus  of  the  Roman  plebeians  and  the  Pennsylvania 
coal  strike,  the  agrarian  agitation  of  the  Gracchi  and  the 
rising  of  the  Russian  peasants,  —  it  is  all  the  same  tragic 
human  life.  And  in  all  history  it  would  be  hard  to  find  any 
chapter  so  profoundly  instructive,  and  dignified  by  such 
sublime  passion  and  abihty,  as  that  in  which  the  prophets 
took  the  leading  part. 


2  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Moreover,  the  life  and  thought  of  the  Old  Testament 
prophets  are  more  to  us  than  classical  illustrations  and  side- 
lights. They  are  an  integral  part  of  the  thought-life  of 
Christianity.  From  the  beginning  the  Christian  Church 
appropriated  the  Bible  of  Israel  as  its  own  book  and  thereby 
made  the  history  of  Israel  part  of  the  history  of  Christen- 
dom. That  history  lives  in  the  heart  of  the  Christian  na- 
tions with  a  very  real  spiritual  force.  The  average  American 
knows  more  about  David  than  about  King  Arthur,  and 
more  about  the  exodus  from  Egypt  than  about  the  emigra- 
tion of  the  Puritans.  Throughout  the  Christian  centuries 
the  historical  material  embodied  in  the  Old  Testament  has 
been  regarded  as  not  merely  instructive,  but  as  authorita- 
tive. The  social  ideas  drawn  from  it  have  been  powerful 
factors  in  all  attempts  of  Christianity  to  influence  social 
and  political  life.  In  so  far  as  men  have  attempted  to  use 
the  Old  Testament  as  a  code  of  model  laws  and  institutions 
and  have  applied  these  to  modem  conditions,  regardless  of  the 
historical  connections,  these  attempts  have  left  a  trail  of 
blunder  and  disaster.  In  so  far  as  they  have  caught  the  spirit 
that  burned  in  the  hearts  of  the  prophets  and  breathed 
in  gentle  humanity  through  the  Mosaic  Law,  the  influence  of 
the  Old  Testament  has  been  one  of  the  great  permanent 
^  forces  making  for  democracy  and  social  justice.  However 
our  views  of  the  Bible  may  change,  every  religious  man 
will  continue  to  recognize  that  to  the  elect  minds  of  the 
Jewish  people  God  gave  so  vivid  a  consciousness  of  the 
divine  will  that,  in  its  main  tendencies  at  least,  their  life 
and  thought  carries  a  permanent  authority  for  all  who  wish 
to  know  the  higher  right  of  God.  Their  writings  are  like 
channel-buoys  anchored  by  God,  and  we  shall  do  well  to 


THE  HISTORICAL  ROOTS   OF   CHRISTIANITY  3 

heed  them  now  that  the  roar  of  an  angry  surf  is  in  our 
ears. 

We  shall  confine  this  brief  study  of  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  prophets,  because  they  are  the  beating  heart  of  the  Old 
Testament.  Modem  study  has  shown  that  they  were  the 
real  makers  of  the  unique  religious  life  of  Israel.  If  all  that 
proceeded  from  them,  directly  or  indirectly,  were  eliminated 
from  the  Old  Testament,  there  would  be  little  left  to  appeal 
to  the  moral  and  religious  judgment  of  the  modem  world. 
Moreover,  a  comprehension  of  the  essential  purpose  and 
spirit  of  the  prophets  is  necessary  for  a  comprehension  of 
the  purpose  and  spirit  of  Jesus  and  of  genuine  Christianity. 
In  Jesus  and  the  primitive  Church  the  prophetic  spirit 
rose  from  the  dead.  To  the  ceremonial  aspects  of  Jewish 
religion  Jesus  was  either  indifferent  or  hostile;  the  thought 
of  the  prophets  was  the  spiritual  food  that  he  assimilated 
in  his  own  process  of  growth.  With  them  he  linked  his 
points  of  view,  the  convictions  which  he  regarded  as  axio- 
matic. Their  spirit  was  to  him  what  the  soil  and  climate 
of  a  country  are  to  its  flora.  The  real  meaning  of  his  life 
and  the  real  direction  of  his  purposes  can  be  understood  only 
in  that  historical  connection. 

Thus  a  study  of  the  prophets  is  not  only  an  interest- 
ing part  in  the  history  of  social  movements  but  it  is  indis- 
pensable for  any  full  comprehension  of  the  social  influence 
exerted  by  historical  Christianity,  and  for  any  tme  com- 
prehension of  the  mind  of  Jesus  Christ. 

For  the  purposes  of  this  book  it  is  not  necessary  to  follow 
the  work  of  the  prophets  in  their  historical  sequence.  We 
shall  simply  try  to  lay  bare  those  large  and  permanent 
characteristics  which  are  common  to  that  remarkable  series 
of  men  and  which  bear  on  the  question  in  hand. 


<^ 


4  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Religion  The  fundamental  conviction  of  the  prophets,  which  dis- 

therefore       tinguished  them  from  the  ordinary  rehgious  Hfe  of  their  day, 
social.  .^a^s  tjjg  conviction  that  God  demands  righteousness  and 

"^    demands  nothing  but  righteousness. 

Primitive  rehgions  consisted  mainly  in  the  worship  of  the 
powers  of  nature.  Each  tribe  worshipped  its  local  tribal 
god,  who  dwelt  in  some  gloomy  ravine  or  on  some  mountain- 
top  and  sent  rain  and  fertility  to  his  people  when  he  was 
pleased,  or  drought  and  pestilence  on  crops  and  herds  when 
he  was  offended.  Like  every  other  despot,  the  god  must  be 
kept  in  good  humor  by  valuable  gifts  and  prayers,  offered  in 
the  right  places,  in  the  right  manner,  and  by  the  duly  qualified 
persons.  If  the  sacrifices  were  neglected,  the  god  was  sure 
to  be  angry  and  then  had  to  be  propitiated  by  redoubled 
offerings,  incantations,  and  dances.  There  was  always  some 
connection  between  religion  and  morality.  It  was  always  un- 
derstood that  the  tribal  god  had  instituted  the  tribal  customs 
and  was  displeased  with  any  violation  of  them.  But  the 
essential  thing  in  religion  was  not  morality,  but  the  ceremonial 
method  of  placating  the  god,  securing  his  gifts,  and  ascertain- 
ing his  wishes.  He  might  even  be  pleased  best  by  immoral 
actions,  by  the  immolation  of  human  victims,  by  the  sacrifice 
of  woman's  chastity,  or  by  the  burning  of  the  first-bom. 

In  the  primitive  life  of  the  Israelitish  tribes  the  religion  of 
the  common  folk  was  probably  much  of  this  kind.  Jehovah 
was  the  tribal  god  of  Israel.  Fortunately  he  was  stronger 
and  more  terrible  than  the  gods  of  the  neighboring  tribes,  so 
that  he  was  able  to  drive  them  out  and  give  their  land  to  his 
own  people,  but  he  was  not  fundamentally  different  from 
them  and  they  were  believed  to  be  quite  as  real  as  Jehovah. 
There  were  certain  forms  of  moral  evil  which  he  hated  and 


THE   HISTORICAL   ROOTS   OF   CHRISTIANITY  5 

certain  social  duties  which  he  loved  and  blessed,  but  the 
surest  way  of  remaining  in  his  favor  was  to  sacrifice  duly 
and  plentifully.  If  a  man  had  offended  against  his  fellow 
or  his  tribe,  Jehovah  would  forgive  when  the  rich  smell  of 
burnt  meat  filled  his  nostrils. 

Against  this  current  conception  of  religion  the  prophets  f 
insisted  on  a  right  life  as  the  true  worship  of  God.  Morality 
to  them  was  not  merely  a  prerequisite  of  effective  ceremonial 
worship.  They  brushed  sacrificial  ritual  aside  altogether  as 
trifling  compared  with  righteousness,  nay,  as  a  harmful  sub- 
stitute and  a  hindrance  for  ethical  religion.  "I  desire  good- 
ness and  not  sacrifice,"  said  Hosea,^  and  Jesus  was  fond  of  V" 
quoting  the  words.  The  Book  of  Isaiah  begins  with  a  de- 
scription of  the  disasters  which  had  overtaken  the  nation, 
and  then  in  impassioned  words  the  prophet  spurns  the  means 
taken  to  appease  Jehovah's  anger.  He  said  the  herds  of 
beasts  trampling  his  temple-court,  the  burning  fat,  the  reek 
of  blood,  the  clouds  of  incense,  were  a  weariness  and  an 
abomination  to  the  God  whom  they  were  meant  to  please. 
Their  festivals  and  solemn  meetings,  their  prayers  and  pros- 
trations, were  iniquity  from  which  he  averted  his  face.  What 
he  wanted  was  a  right  life  and  the  righting  of  social  wrongs : 
"  Your  hands  are  full  of  blood.  Wash  you !  Make  you  clean ! 
Put  away  the  evil  of  your  doings  from  before  mine  eyes ! 
Cease  to  do  evil !  Learn  to  do  right !  Seek  justice !  Re- 
lieve the  oppressed  !  Secure  justice  for  the  orphaned  and  ^ 
plead  for  the  widow."  ^ 

Perhaps  the  simplest  and  most  beautiful  expression  of  that 
reformatory  conception  of  true  religion  is  contained  in  the 
words  of  Micah:   "Wherewith  shall  I  come  before  Jehovah,      v 

*  Hosea  6.  6.  *  Isaiah  i.  10-17. 


6  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

and  bow  myself  before  the  high  God  ?  Shall  I  come  before 
him  with  bumt-offerings,  with  calves  a  year  old  ?  Will  Jehovah 
be  pleased  with  thousands  of  rams,  or  with  ten  thousands 
of  rivers  of  oil?  Shall  I  give  my  firstborn  for  my  trans- 
gression, the  fruit  of  my  body  for  the  sin  of  my  soul?  He 
hath  shewed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good;  and  what  doth 
Jehovah  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  kindness, 
and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God?"  ^ 

Amos  and  Jeremiah  even  tried  to  cut  away  the  foundation 
of  antiquity  on  which  the  sacrificial  system  rested,  by  deny- 
ing that  God  had  commanded  sacrifices  at  all  when  he  con- 
stituted the  nation  after  the  exodus  from  Egypt.  Obedience 
was  all  that  he  had  required.^ 

This  insistence  on  religious  morality  as  the  only  thing  God 
cares  about  is  of  fundamental  importance  for  the  question 
before  us.  The  social  problems  are  moral  problems  on  a 
large  scale.  Religion  is  a  tremendous  generator  of  self- 
V  sacrificing  action.  Under  its  impulse  men  have  burned  up 
the  animals  they  had  laboriously  raised ;  they  have  sacrificed 
their  first -bom  whom  they  loved  and  prized ;  they  have  tapped 
their  own  veins  and  died  with  a  shout  of  triumph.  But  this 
unparalleled  force  has  been  largely  diverted  to  ceremonial 
actions  which  wasted  property  and  labor,  and  were  either 
useless  to  social  health  or  injurious  to  it.  In  so  far  as  men 
believed  that  the  traditional  ceremonial  was  what  God 
wanted  of  them,  they  would  be  indifferent  to  the  reformation 
of  social  ethics.  If  the  hydraulic  force  of  religion  could  be 
turned  toward  conduct,  there  is  nothing  which  it  could  not 
accomplish. 

'  Micah  6.  6-8.     See  also  Psalm  40.  6,  50.  8-15,  51.  16-17. 
^  Amos  5.  25;  Jeremiah  7.  22-23. 


THE    HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  7 

This  is  still  a  living  question.  Under  the  influence  of  non- 
Christian  customs  and  conceptions  Christianity  early  devel- 
oped its  own  ceremonial  system.  It  is,  of  course,  far  more 
refined.  Our  places  of  worship  have  no  stench  of  blood  and  en- 
trails ;  our  priests  are  not  expert  butchers.  But  the  immense 
majority  of  people  in  Christendom  have  holy  places,  where 
they  recite  a  sacred  ritual  and  go  through  sacred  motions. 
They  receive  holy  food  and  submit  to  washings  that  cleanse 
from  sin.  They  have  a  priesthood  with  magic  powers  which 
offers  a  bloodless  sacrifice.  This  Christian  ritual  grew  up, 
not  as  the  appropriate  and  aesthetic  expression  of  spiritual 
emotions,  but  as  the  indispensable  means  of  pleasing  and 
appeasing  God,  and  of  securing  his  favors,  temporal  and 
eternal,  for  those  who  put  their  heart  into  these  processes. 
This  Christian  ceremonial  system  does  not  differ  essentially 
from  that  against  which  the  prophets  protested ;  with  a  few 
verbal  changes  their  invectives  would  still  apply.  But  the 
point  that  here  concerns  us  is  that  a  very  large  part  of  the 
fervor  of  willing  devotion  which  religion  always  generates  in 
human  hearts  has  spent  itself  on  these  religious  acts.  The 
force  that  would  have  been  competent  to  "seek  justice  and 
relieve  the  oppressed  "  has  been  consumed  in  weaving  the 
tinsel  fringes  for  the  garment  of  religion. 

The  prophets  were  the  heralds  of  the  fundamental  truth 
that  religion  and  ethics  are  inseparable,  and  that  ethical 
conduct  is  the  supreme  and  sufficient  religious  act.  If  that 
principle  had  been  fully  adopted  in  our  religious  life,  it  would 
have  turned  the  full  force  of  the  religious  impulse  into  the 
creation  of  right  moral  conduct  and  would  have  made  the 
unchecked  growth  and  accumulation  of  injustice  impossible. 
This  assertion  can  be  verified  by  history.     The  Calvinistic 


8  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Reformation  stripped  off  a  large  part  of  the  traditional  cere- 
monial of  the  Church  and  it  turned  religious  energy  into 
>/  political  and  intellectual  channels.  As  a  consequence  the 
Calvinistic  peoples  at  once  leaped  forward  in  the  direction  of 
democracy  and  education,  and  received  such  an  increment  of 
social  efficiency  that  in  spite  of  terrible  handicaps  they  out- 
stripped the  stronger  nations  which  failed  to  make  this  fuller 
connection  between  religion  and  social  morality. 

It  is  important  to  note,  further,  that  the  morality  which  the 
prophets  had  in  mind  in  their  strenuous  insistence  on  right- 
Public  and  eousness  was  not  merely  the  private  morality  of  the  home, 
moraHty^  ^  "^  but  the  public  morality  on  which  national  life  is  founded. 
They  said  less  about  the  pure  heart  for  the  individual  than  of 
just  institutions  for  the  nation.  We  are  accustomed  to  con- 
nect piety  with  the  thought  of  private  virtues ;  the  pious  man 
is  the  quiet,  temperate,  sober,  kindly  man.  The  evils  against 
which  we  contend  in  the  churches  are  intemperance,  un- 
chastity,  the  sins  of  the  tongue.  The  twin-evil  against  which 
the  prophets  launched  the  condemnation  of  Jehovah  was 
injustice  and  oppression. 

The  religious  ideal  of  Israel  was  the  theocracy.  But  the 
theocracy  meant  the  complete  penetration  of  the  national  life 
by  religious  morality.  It  meant  politics  in  the  name  of  God. 
That  line  by  which  we  have  tacitly  separated  the  domain  of 
public  affairs  and  the  domain  of  Christian  life  was  unknown 
to  them. 

The  prophets  were  not  religious  individuahsts.  During  the 
classical  times  of  prophetism  they  always  dealt  with  Israel 
and  Judah  as  organic  totalities.  They  conceived  of  their 
people  as  a  gigantic  personality  which  sinned  as  one  and 


THE   HISTORICAL   ROOTS   OF   CHRISTIANITY  9 

ought  to  repent  as  one.  When  they  speak  of  their  nation  as 
a  virgin,  as  a  city,  as  a  vine,  they  are  attempting  by  these 
figures  of  speech  to  express  this  organic  and  corporate  social 
Hfe.  In  this  respect  they  anticipated  a  modem  conception 
which  now  underhes  our  scientific  comprehension  of  social 
development  and  on  which  modern  historical  studies  are  based. 
We  shall  see  that  it  was  only  when  the  national  hfe  of  Israel 
was  crushed  by  foreign  invaders  that  the  prophets  began  to 
address  themselves  to  the  individual  life  and  lost  the  large 
horizon  of  public  life. 

The  prophets  were  public  men  and  their  interest  was  in 
public  affairs.  Some  of  them  were  statesmen  of  the  highest 
type.  All  of  them  interpreted  past  history,  shaped  present 
history,  and  foretold  future  history  on  the  basis  of  the  con- 
viction that  God  rules  with  righteousness  in  the  affairs  of 
nations,  and  that  only  what  is  just,  and  not  what  is  expedient 
and  profitable,  shall  endure.  Samuel  was  the  creator  of  two 
dynasties.  Nathan  and  Gad  were  the  political  advisers  of 
David.  Nathan  determined  the  succession  of  Solomon.  The 
seed  of  revolutionary  aspirations  against  the  dynasty  of  David 
was  dropped  into  the  heart  of  Jeroboam  by  the  prophet 
Ahijah  of  Shiloh.  Some  of  the  prophets  would  get  short 
shrift  in  a  European  State  as  religious  demagogues.  The 
overthrow  of  the  dynasty  of  Omri  in  the  Northern  Kingdom 
was  the  result  of  a  conspiracy  between  the  prophetic  party 
under  Elisha  and  General  Jehu,  and  resulted  in  a  massacre 
so  fearful  that  it  staggered  even  the  Oriental  political  con- 
science. On  the  other  hand  the  insight  of  Isaiah  into  the 
international  situation  of  his  day  saved  his  people  for  a  long 
time  from  being  embroiled  in  the  destructive  upheavals  that 
buried  other  peoples,  and  gave  it  thirty  years  of  peace  amid 


lO  CHRISTIANITY  AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

almost  universal  war.  The  sufferings  of  Jeremiah  came  upon 
him  chiefly  because  he  took  the  unpopular  side  in  national 
politics.  If  he  and  others  had  confined  themselves  to  "reli- 
gion," they  could  have  said  what  they  liked. 

Our  modem  religious  horizon  and  our  conception  of  the 
character  of  a  religious  leader  and  teacher  are  so  different 
that  it  is  not  easy  to  understand  men  who  saw  the  province 
of  religion  chiefly  in  the  broad  reaches  of  civic  affairs  and 
international  relations.  Our  philosophical  and  economic 
individualism  has  affected  our  religious  thought  so  deeply 
that  we  hardly  comprehend  the  prophetic  views  of  an  organic 
national  life  and  of  national  sin  and  salvation.  We  usually 
conceive  of  the  community  as  a  loose  sand -heap  of  indi- 
viduals and  this  difference  in  the  fundamental  point  of  view 
distorts  the  utterances  of  the  prophets  as  soon  as  we  handle 
them.  For  instance,  one  of  our  most  beautiful  revival  texts 
is  the  invitation :  "Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall 
be  as  white  as  snow;  though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they 
shall  be  as  wool."  The  words  are  part  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Isaiah,  to  which  reference  has  been  made.  The  prophet 
throughout  the  chapter  deals  with  the  national  condition  of 
the  kingdom  of  Judah  and  its  capital.  He  describes  its  dev- 
astation; he  ridicules  the  attempts  to  appease  the  national 
God  by  redoubled  sacrifices;  he  urges  instead  the  abolition 
of  social  oppression  and  injustice  as  the  only  way  of  regain- 
ing God's  favor  for  the  nation.  If  they  would  vindicate  the 
cause  of  the  helpless  and  oppressed,  then  he  would  freely 
pardon ;  then  their  scarlet  and  crimson  guilt  would  be  washed 
away.  The  familiar  text  is  followed  by  the  very  material 
promise  of  economic  prosperity,  and  the  threat  of  continued 
war:   "If  ye  be  willing  and  obedient,  ye  shall  eat  the  good 


THE   HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  II 

of  the  land ;  but  if  ye  refuse  and  rebel,  ye  shall  be  devoured 
with  the  sword."  Of  course  the  text  is  nobly  true  when  it 
is  made  to  express  God's  willingness  to  pardon  the  repentant 
individual,  but  that  was  not  the  thought  in  the  mind  of  the 
writer.  He  offered  a  new  start  to  his  nation  on  condition 
that  it  righted  social  wrongs.  We  offer  free  pardon  to  in- 
dividuals and  rarely  mention  social  wrongs. 

We  have  seen  that  the  prophets  demanded  right  moral 
conduct  as  the  sole  test  and  fruit  of  religion,  and  that  the 
morality  which  they  had  in  mind  was  not  the  private  morahty 
of  detached  pious  souls  but  the  social  morality  of  the  nation. 
This  they  preached,  and  they  backed  their  preaching  by  active 
participation  in  public  action  and  discussion.  v 

We  advance  another  step  in  our  study  when  we  emphasize 
that  the  sympathy  of  the  prophets,  even  of  the  most  aristo- 
cratic among  them,  was  entirely  on  the  side  of  the  poorer  k  ' 
classes.     Professor  Kautzsch  says:   "Since  Amos  it  was  the  The  cham- 
alpha  and  omega  of  prophetic  preaching  to  insist  on  right  and  ^J^"^  *^ 
justice,  to  warn  against  the  oppression  of  the  poor  and  help- 
less." ^    The  edge  of  their  invectives  was  turned  against  the 
land-hunger  of  the  landed  aristocracy  who  "joined  house  to 
house  and  laid  field  to  field,"  till  a  country  of  sturdy  peasants 
was  turned  into  a  series  of  great  estates ;  ^  against  the  capitalis- 
tic ruthlessness  that  "sold  the  righteous  for  silver  and  the 
needy  for  a  pair  of  shoes,"  thrusting  the  poor  free-man  into 
slavery  to  collect  a  trifling  debt ;  ^  against  the  venality  of  the 
judges  who  took  bribes  and  had  a  double  standard  of  law 

•  Kautzsch,  "  Geschichte  des  alttestamentlichen  Schrifttums." 
'  Isaiah  5.  8  ;    Micah  2.  2. 
'  Amos  2.  6. 


12  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

for  the  rich  and  the  poor/  This  dominant  trait  of  their  moral 
feeling  reacted  on  their  theology,  so  that  it  became  one  of  the 
fundamental  attributes  of  their  God  that  he  was  the  husband 
of  the  widow,  the  father  of  the  orphan,  and  the  protector  of 
the  stranger.  The  widows  and  the  fatherless  were  those  who 
had  no  concrete  power  to  back  their  claims,  no  "influence," 
no  "financial  interest,"  no  "pull"  with  the  police  judges  and 
aldermen  of  that  time.  The  "stranger"  was  the  immigrant 
who  had  no  part  in  the  blood-kinship  of  the  clan,  and  hence 
no  share  in  the  land  and  no  voice  in  the  common  affairs  of 
the  village.  His  modem  brother  is  the  proletarian  immigrant 
of  our  cities,  who  also  has  no  share  in  the  modem  means  of 
production  and  no  political  power  to  protect  his  interests. 
When  the  prophets  conceived  Jehovah  as  the  special  vindi- 
cator of  these  voiceless  classes,  it  was  another  way  of  saying 
that  it  is  the  chief  duty  in  religious  morality  to  stand  for  the 
rights  of  the  helpless. 

A  man's  sympathy  is  a  more  decisive  fact  in  his  activity 
than  his  judgment.  One  man  to-day  may  disapprove  of  a 
given  action  of  a  railway  or  of  a  coal-combine,  but  his  in- 
stinctive sympathy  is  always  with  "property"  and  "the  vested 
interests."  Another  man  may  lament  and  condemn  a  foolish 
strike  or  headlong  violence,  but  he  will  dwell  on  the  extenu- 
ating circumstances  and  hold  to  the  fundamental  justice  of 
"the  cause  of  labor."  This  division  of  sympathy  is  now 
coming  to  be  the  real  line  of  cleavage  in  our  public  affairs. 
There  is  no  question  on  which  side  the  sympathy  of  the 
prophets  was  enlisted.  Their  protest  against  injustice  and 
oppression,  to  the  neglect  of  all  other  social  evils,  is  almost 

•  J.  F.  McCurdy,  "History,  Prophecy,  and  the  Monuments,"  II,  206- 
213, 


THE   HISTORICAL   ROOTS   OF   CHRISTIANITY  1 3 

monotonous.  To  the  more  judicial  and  scientific  temper  of 
our  day  their  invective  vi^ould  seem  overdrawn  and  their 
sympathy  would  seem  partisanship.  In  Jeremiah  and  in  the 
prophetic  psalms  the  poor  as  a  class  are  made  identical  with 
the  meek  and  godly,  and  "rich"  and  "wicked"  are  almost  ^ 
synonymous  terms. 

How  did  the  championship  of  the  oppressed  come  to  be  so 
essential  a  part  of  prophetic  morality  ?  It  would  be  hard  to 
find  a  parallel  to  it  anywhere.  What  other  nation  has  a 
library  of  classics  in  which  the  spokesmen  of  the  common 
people  have  the  dominant  voice  ?  If  any  one  cares  to  assert 
that  divine  inspiration  alone  will  account  for  the  fact,  I 
should  have  no  quarrel  with  the  assertion.  If  the  people 
ever  come  to  their  own  in  days  to  come,  it  may  be  that  this 
trait  of  the  Old  Testament  will  come  to  be  a  stronger  proof 
of  its  inspiration  than  the  arguments  that  have  hitherto  done 
duty  in  theology. 

But  there  were  good  historical  causes  for  the  attitude  of 
the  prophets  in  contemporary  social  movements. 

When  the  nomad  tribes  of  Israel  settled  in  Canaan  and 
gradually  became  an  agricultural  people,  they  set  out  on  their 
development  toward  civilization  with  ancient  customs  and 
rooted  ideas  that  long  protected  primitive  democracy  and 
equality.  Some  tribes  and  clans  claimed  an  aristocratic 
superiority  of  descent  over  others.  Within  the  tribe  there 
were  elders  and  men  of  power  to  whom  deference  was  due  as 
a  matter  of  course,  but  there  was  no  hereditary  social  boimdary 
line,  no  graded  aristocracy  or  caste,  no  distinction  between 
blue  blood  and  red.  The  idea  of  a  mesalliance^  which  plays 
so  great  a  part  in  the  social  hfe  of  European  nations  and  in 
the  plots  of  their  romantic  literature,  is  wholly  wanting  in  the 


14  CHRISTIANITY  AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Old  Testament.^  When  the  Bible  became  the  property  of 
the  common  man  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  the  total 
absence  of  a  feudal  nobility  in  the  divinely  instituted  social 
life  of  Israel  struck  the  people  as  an  astonishing  fact.  It 
contributed  greatly  to  emancipate  them  from  their  feudal 
reverence  and  added  force  to  the  democratic  movements  of 
that  revolutionary  age.  The  impression  of  primitive  democ- 
racy made  by  the  Bible  is  expressed  in  the  old  saying  on 
which  John  Ball  preached  to  the  English  peasants  in  Wat 
Tyler's  rebellion :  — 

"When  Adam  dalf  and  Eve  span, 
Where  was  thanne  a  gentilman?" 

The  great  Alexandrian  Jew  Philo  expressed  the  same  im- 
pression about  the  Law:  "If  there  is  any  one  in  the  world 
who  is  a  praiser  of  equality,  that  man  is  Moses."  ^  It  was 
the  decay  of  the  primitive  democracy,  and  the  growth  of 
luxury,  tyranny,  extortion,  of  court  life  and  a  feudal  nobility, 
which  Samuel  wisely  feared  when  the  people  demanded  a 
king.^ 

The  ownership  of  the  land  is  the  fundamental  economic  fact 
in  all  communities.  Unequal  distribution  of  the  land  and  an 
hereditary  aristocracy  have  always  been  inseparable  facts. 
Approximately  equal  distribution  of  the  land  is  the  necessary 
basis  for  political  and  social  democracy.  Like  all  primitive 
peoples,  Israel  set  out  with  a  large  measure  of  communism  in  '^ 
land.  It  was  used  in  severalty,  but  owned  by  the  clan.  At 
the  conquest  it  was  distributed  to  the  tribes  and  there  were 

*  Buhl,  "  Die  socialen  Verhaeltnisse  der  Israeliten,"  §§  4-9. 
^  Philo,  "  Who  is  an  Heir  of  Divine  Things?  "  §  ^s-     John's  edition  of 
Philo,  Vol.  II. 

'  I  Samuel  8.  10-18. 


THE   HISTORICAL   ROOTS    OF   CHRISTIANITY  1 5 

ancient  customs  to  prevent  its  alienation  from  the  tribe.  The 
principle  was  recognized  that  every  family  should  have  a 
freehold  in  land. 

In  this  absence  of  social  caste  and  this  fair  distribution  of 
the  means  of  production,  the  early  times  of  Israel  were  much 
hke  the  early  times  in  our  own  country.  America  too  set 
out  with  an  absence  of  hereditary  aristocracy  and  with  a  fair 
distribution  of  the  land  among  the  farming  population.  Both 
the  Jewish  and  the  American  people  were  thereby  equipped 
with  a  kind  of  ingrained,  constitutional  taste  for  democracy 
which  dies  hard.  In  time  Israel  drifted  away  from  this 
primitive  fairness  and  simplicity,  just  as  we  are  drifting  away 
from  it.  A  new  civilization  arose,  based  on  commerce  and 
mobile  wealth.  Capital  controlled  the  food  supply.  Great 
landed  estates  displaced  the  peasantry.  The  poor  man,  with- 
out the  natural  footing  on  the  land,  was  often  pushed  over 
the  precipice  of  want  by  any  special  emergency  of  war, 
famine,  or  sickness,  and  was  sold  into  slavery  for  debt.  The 
cities  grew  in  size  and  importance.  Rich  men  built  stone 
houses  and  summer  villas,  and  feasted  daily  on  meat  and 
wine,  which  the  poor  man  tasted  perchance  thrice  a  year  at 
the  great  feasts.  Wealthy  women  robed  their  persons  with 
the  wealth  wrung  from  the  poor.  As  everywhere,  this  con- 
dition, when  once  created,  tended  to  perpetuate  itself  and  to 
guard  against  any  reversal.  The  rich  controlled  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  law.  Priests  and  magistrates  shared  in  the 
thirst  for  the  most  attractive  of  all  narcotics  —  wealth.  The 
rich  in  their  well-fed  optimism  were  lifted  out  of  the  natural 
human  s)Tnpathy  with  the  poor. 

This  rapid  increase  in  wealth,  with  the  usual  unequal  dis- 
tribution of  it,  set  in  during  the  forty  years  preceding  Amos. 


l6  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

The  old  democratic  instinct  of  the  people  angrily  resented 
this  upstart  tyranny.  It  is  a  popular  fallacy  that  long-con- 
tinued oppression  and  misery  cause  revolutionary  impatience. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  while  the  bit  is  new  in  the  mustang's 
mouth  that  it  rears  and  plunges.  When  a  well-fed  and  in- 
dependent people,  with  fresh  memories  of  better  days,  are 
forced  under  the  yoke,  they  are  sure  to  protest.  To  the 
fellahin  of  Egypt  poverty  and  exploitation  seem  as  inevitable 
as  the  fall  of  night  and  the  coming  of  death.  In  the  United 
States  the  reaction  against  injustice  is  setting  in  swiftly  and 
unanimously,  though  our  working  people  are  still  in  a  con- 
dition that  would  seem  paradise  to  the  poor  of  other  nations. 
So  it  was  in  Israel,  and  in  that  deeply  religious  age  the 
protest  was  made  in  the  name  of  God  and  by  his  spokesmen, 
the  prophets.  Amos,  the  first  of  the  great  social  prophets, 
was  a  herdsman  of  Tekoa.  He  uttered  the  message  of  God, 
but  he  also  expressed  the  feelings  of  the  agrarian  class  to 
which  he  belonged.  Abraham  Lincoln  in  the  contest  against 
the  slave-holding  power,  Henry  George  and  Father  McGlynn 
in  their  protest  against  the  alienation  of  the  land,  revived  the 
earlier  democracy  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and 
taught  once  more  that  all  men  are  created  free  and  equal, 
and  are  endowed  with  the  inalienable  right  to  life,  liberty,  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness.  Similarly  the  championship  of  the 
poor  by  the  prophets  was  not  due  to  the  inflow  of  novel  social 
ideals,  but  to  the  survival  of  nobler  conceptions  to  which 
they  clung  in  the  face  of  the  distorted  social  conditions  cre- 
ated by  the  new  commercialism.  They  were  the  voice 
of  an  untainted  popular  conscience,  made  bold  by  religious 
faith. 

We  have  an  excellent  illustration  of  t^is  in  the  story  of 


THE   HISTORICAL   ROOTS    OF   CHRISTIANITY  1 7 

Ahab  and  Naboth's  vineyard.  Ahab  knew  the  tenacity  with 
which  the  Israehte  clung  to  his  freehold,  and  the  sanctity 
which  attached  to  the  ancestral  inheritance,  and  hence,  when 
Naboth  refused  to  sell,  the  king  could  only  fume  helplessly 
at  the  failure  of  his  pretty  plans  for  a  private  park.  His 
wife  was  from  Tyre,  where  royal  power  was  older  and  ac- 
customed to  move  rough-shod  over  the  fancied  rights  of  the 
common  herd.  She  sneered  at  his  feeble  grip  and  gave  him  a 
lesson  in  handling  the  judiciary.  But  the  judicial  murder  of 
Naboth  brought  Elijah  out  to  face  the  king,  a  grim  incarna- 
tion of  justice  and  of  the  divine  rights  of  the  people.  Ahab 
had  collided  with  the  primitive  land-system  of  Israel  and  the 
prophetic  sense  of  justice,  and  it  cost  his  dynasty  the  throne 
and  Jezebel  her  life.^ 

Another  cause  for  the  keen  interest  of  the  prophets  in  social 
justice  deserves  mention.  The  beHef  in  a  future  life  and 
future  reward  and  punishment  was  almost  absent  in  He- 
brew religion.  To  live  to  an  honored  old  age,  to  see  his 
children  and  children's  children,  to  enjoy  the  fruit  of  his  labor 
in  peace  under  his  own  vine  and  fig-tree  —  that  was  all  the 
heaven  to  which  the  pious  Israelite  looked  forward.  If 
social  oppression  robbed  him  of  that,  it  robbed  him  of  all. 
It  even  cheated  him  of  his  faith  in  the  justice  of  God.  On  the 
supposition  of  a  future  life  we  can  adjourn  the  manifest 
inequities  of  this  life  to  the  hereafter  and  trust  that  good  and 
evil  will  yet  be  balanced  justly  when  time  and  eternity  are 
put  together.  In  early  Hebrew  theology  there  were  no  such 
adjourned  assizes  for  the  individual.  God  must  prove  his 
justice  here  or  never.  If  the  wicked  waxed  fat  and  the  pious 
were  robbed  with  impunity,  the  moral  order  of  the  universe 

*  I  Kings  21. 
c 


l8  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

was  under  indictment.  In  Christianity,  faith  in  the  future 
life  has  to  some  extent  subdued  the  demand  for  social  justice, 
as  we  shall  see  later.  The  absence  of  this  belief  in  He- 
brew religion  served  to  make  the  desire  for  earthly  pros- 
perity more  direct  and  impatient,  and  beHef  in  the  divine 
justice  lent  rehgious  sanction  to  the  demand  for  economic 
justice. 

The  full  strength  of  the  humane  social  conceptions  prevail- 
ing in  Israel  can  be  gauged  only  if  we  draw  the  Law  into  our 
discussion.  We  do  not  turn  away  from  the  prophets  when  we 
turn  to  the  Law.  According  to  the  old  interpretation,  the 
entire  Law  contained  in  the  Pentateuch  was  given  by  Jehovah 
to  Moses  and  thus  from  the  birth  of  the  nation  formed  the 
foundation  on  which  its  whole  life  rested.  In  that  case  the 
prophets  drew  their  ideals  from  the  Law  and  their  preaching 
was  but  a  summons  to  the  people  to  obey  it.  According  to 
f^  V  the  modern  critical  interpretation  only  a  small  part  of  the 
Law  was  of  very  ancient  origin.  The  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
was  the  outgrowth  of  prophetic  ideas  and  agitation  in  the 
seventh  century  before  Christ.  The  other  portions  of  the 
Law  did  not  originate  till  the  Exile  or  after  it,  when  the  life  of 
Judah  had  been  long  and  deeply  saturated  with  the  teach- 
ing of  the  prophets.  Thus  on  the  one  hypothesis  the  Law 
created  the  prophets;  on  the  other  hypothesis  the  prophets 
created  the  Law.  In  either  case  the  relation  is  very  close  and 
causal.  For  any  thorough  discussion  of  the  social  ideals 
embodied  in  the  Law  it  would  be  necessary  to  decide  between 
these  two  hypotheses.  For  our  purpose  it  is  sufficient  to 
point  out  that  the  Law  and  the  prophets  are  a  deposit  of  the 
same  strong  current  of  historical  life,  related  to  each  other  as 
cause  and  effect. 


THE   HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  1 9 

The  Law,  of  course,  recognized  such  fundamental  customs 
and  institutions  of  primitive  Oriental  civilization  as  slavery, 
polygamy,  and  blood- revenge.  In  so  far  as  it  gives  formal 
sanction  to  these  institutions,  it  drops  below  the  conceptions 
of  human  rights  to  which  we  have  now  attained.  But  its 
general  drift  and  purpose,  its  regard  for  the  rights  of  the  poor, 
and  its  tenderness  even  for  their  finer  feelings  of  self-respect 
are  so  noble  and  humane  that  one  cannot  study  the  social 
features  of  the  Hebrew  Law  without  a  thrill  of  sympathy  and 
admiration.  By  swift  moral  intuition,  by  the  instinct  of 
human  fellow-feeUng  under  the  impulse  of  rehgious  faith, 
regulations  were  conceived  there  which  anticipated  and  out- 
ran the  rudimentary  protective  legislation  of  our  day.  We 
shall  glance  at  a  few  points  only. 

The  land  belonged  to  Jehovah,  the  national  god.  That 
is  only  ano.ther  way  of  saying  that  it  belonged  to  the  com- 
munity. It  was  not  individual  property,  but  clan  and  family 
property.  There  were  various  provisions  to  protect  the  right 
of  the  family  to  its  ancestral  holding  and  to  prevent  any 
permanent  alienation.  If  land  was  sold  under  stress  of  need, 
it  could  be  purchased  back  under  favdrable  terms.  In  an 
agricultural  community  and  before  the  introduction  of 
machinery  in  farming  the  land  is  by  far  the  most  important 
means  of  production.  It  is  one  of  the  highest  problems  of 
statesmanship  how  to  plant  and  root  the  people  evenly  and 
wisely  in  the  land.  If  the  land  is  owned  by  the  men  who  till 
it,  there  is  social  health  and  strength.  If  it  is  owned  by 
wealthy  proprietors  and  tilled  by  landless  agricultural  labor- 
ers, a  curse  is  on  the  people.  All  the  provisions  of  the 
Hebrew  Law  were  meant  to  counteract  the  separation  of  the 
jeople  from  the  land.     It  sought  to  prevent  the  growth  of 


20  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

great  estates  and  a  landed  aristocracy  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
growth  of  a  landless  proletariat  on  the  other  side.^ 

Every  seven  years  the  fields  were  to  He  fallow  (probably 
in  rotation)  and  their  untilled  harvests  were  to  belong  to  all 
alike,  like  the  berries  that  grow  along  our  country  roadside  or 
in  our  forests.^  Of  course  the  poor  were  benefited  most  by 
such  liberty  to  picnic.  When  the  grain,  the  grapes,  and  the 
olives  were  harvested,  the  poor  had  the  right  to  glean,  and 
the  owner  was  forbidden  to  be  too  careful  in  harvesting 
the  comers  or  to  go  over  the  vines  and  trees  a  second  time.' 
A  hungry  man  passing  through  the  fields  was  always  free  to 
eat  of  grain  or  fruit.*  These  provisions  doubtless  were  based 
on  ancient  customs,  which  in  turn  were  remnants  of  primi- 
tive communism  in  land,  a  lingering  recognition  that  the 
entire  community  has  rights  in  the  land  which  limit  those  of 
the  individual  owner.  This  right  of  the  hungry  man  to 
help  himself  was  not  like  the  coin  flung  to  a  beggar  in  pity. 
It  was  the  claim  to  joint-ownership.  It  was  his  right.  There 
is  a  fundamental  moral  distinction  between  the  two  things. 

The  laborer  was  to  be  paid  at  sundown.^  That  recognizes 
the  importance  of  prompt  payment  of  wages,  for  which 
modem  labor  legislation  has  had  to  contend.  The  principle 
for  which  the  Eight-hour  Movement  and  the  Early-closing 
Movement  now  agitate  was  embodied  in  the  Sabbath  law. 
The  Decalogue  emphatically  throws  the  protection  of  that 
law  over  those  whose  labor-force  was  most  in  danger  of  being 

^  Leviticus  25. 

'Leviticus  25.  1-7;  Exodus  23.  11;  Buhl,  §  22. 

'Deuteronomy  24.  19-22;  Leviticus  19.  9-10,  23.  22. 

*  Deuteronomy  23.  24-25. 

•Deuteronomy  24.  14-15;  Leviticus  19.  13. 


THE    HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF   CHRISTIANITY  21 

exploited,  the  slaves,  the  immigrant  stranger,  and  the  beasts 
of  burden.  It  was  quite  within  the  bounds  of  human  nature 
for  the  frugal  farmer  to  send  them  to  work,  while  he  sent 
himself  to  rest ;  hence  they  are  especially  enumerated.  The 
earliest  form  of  the  Sabbath  law  is  the  most  purely  humane 
in  its  wording:  "that  thine  ox  and  thine  ass,  and  the  son  of 
thy  handmaid,  and  the  sojourner  may  be  refreshed."  ^  In  a 
non-capitaUstic  community  loans  would  usually  be  asked 
only  to  reheve  need  and  therefore  no  advantage  was  to  be 
taken  of  a  neighbor's  necessities  by  making  his  distress 
profitable.  Interest  was  forbidden,  so  that  debt  could  not 
breed  more  hopeless  debt.  This  also  counteracted  the 
tendency  to  inequality  in  mobile  capital.  If  an  Israelite 
through  debt  or  misfortune  became  slave  to  another,  he  was 
not  a  pariah,  but  was  still  to  be  treated  as  a  member  of  the 
family,  with  a  right  to  share  in  the  family  feasts.  His  servi- 
tude was  not  to  become  perpetual  and  when  its  term  was 
over,  he  was  to  be  loaded  with  gifts  that  he  might  have  a 
start  in  shifting  for  himself.  A  fugitive  slave  was  to  be 
protected.  Israel  had  no  "Fugitive  Slave  Law."  There  is 
no  record  of  any  slave  riots  or  of  any  burning  slave  question 
in  its  history.^ 

Thus  the  Law,  like  the  preaching  of  the  prophets,  mani- 
fests a  striking  sympathy  for  the  poorer  classes  and  an  un- 
flagging respect  for  their  equal  humanity.  The  manhood  of 
the  poor  was  more  sacred  to  it  than  the  property  of  the  rich. 
In  this  fundamental  attitude  the  Hebrew  Law  differs  widely 
from  the  Roman  Law,  which  was  formulated  in  a  despotic 

^  Exodus  23.  12.     Kautzsch  translates  it  beautifully :  "einmal  aujatme." 
^Deuteronomy  15  and  23.  15-16.      McCurdy,  "  History,  Prophecy,  and 
the  Monuments,"  II,  175-6. 


22  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

State  and  amidst  a  flagrant  monopoly  of  wealth,  and  is 
responsible  for  much  of  the  excessive  reverence  for  private 
property  rights  in  our  Western  civilization. 

Some  of  the  laws  were  purely  ideal  conceptions.  The  Year 
of  Jubilee  provided  for  a  universal  shake-up  and  a  new  start 
all  around  every  fifty  years;  it  was  to  restore  the  slave  to 
liberty  and  the  peasant  to  his  land,  and  Hft  to  the  saddle  again 
those  families  that  had  been  thrown  by  a  stumble  in  some 
gopher-hole  of  misfortune.^  We  know  that  this  beautiful 
scheme  remained  a  Utopia  which  even  post-exilic  zeal  for  the 
Law  managed  to  disregard.  Other  laws  were  set  aside  by 
the  ruthlessness  of  the  strong.  Only  those  were  likely  to  be 
really  effective  which  were  firmly  based  on  ancient  custom. 
But  in  any  case  these  were  the  ideals  of  social  Hfe  that  Hved 
in  the  nobler  hearts  of  Israel,  and  these  ideals  either  created 
the  prophetic  convictions,  or  they  were  the  product  of  the 
prophetic  preaching. 

he  effect  of       We  rightly  hold  that  social  ideals  of  such  moral  value  could 

terest^on     g^ow  only  out  of  a  religious  hfe  of  high  value.     But  the 

le  religious  reverse  is  also  historically  true :  that  the  high  religious  life  of 

Israel  could  develop  only  within  a  nation  that  cherished  and 

maintained  such  social  ideals. 

We  have  seen  that  the  religion  of  the  prophets  was  not  the 
quiet  devoutness  of  private  religion.  They  lived  in  the  open 
V  air  of  national  life.  Every  heart-beat  of  their  nation  was 
registered  in  the  pulse-throb  of  the  prophets.  They  made  the 
history  of  their  nation,  but  in  turn  the  history  of  their  nation 
made  them.  They  looked  open-eyed  at  the  events  about 
them  and  then  turned  to  the  inner  voice  of  God  to  interpret 

» Leviticus  25.  8-17,  47-55- 


THE    HISTORICAL   ROOTS    OF   CHRISTIANITY  23 

what  they  saw.  They  went  to  school  with  a  Kving  God  who 
was  then  at  work  in  his  world,  and  not  with  a  God  who  had 
acted  long  ago  and  put  it  down  in  a  book.  They  learned 
religion  by  the  laboratory  method  of  studying  contemporary 
life.  Consequently  their  conception  of  God  and  of  God's 
purposes  was  enlarged  and  clarified  as  their  political  horizon 
grew  wider  and  clearer. 

The  first  rise  of  widespread  prophetism  of  which  we  have 
any  record  in  Israel  was  historically  connected  with  the  raids 
and  invasions  of  the  Philistines  (about  1020  B.C.).  Against 
their  united  and  disciplined  forces  the  scattered  tribes  were 
helpless.  The  national  calamity  created  a  religious  revival. 
We  catch  ghmpses  of  bands  of  prophets  moving  about  in 
rhythmical  processions,  with  music  and  song,  spreading  a 
contagious  religious  ecstasy.  In  Samuel  the  popular  emotion 
found  a  practical,  statesmanlike  expression.  The  result  was 
the  election  of  the  first  king,  the  most  important  step  toward 
organized  national  unity.  As  in  the  case  of  the  American 
colonies  and  of  the  German  States,  the  pressure  of  a  great  war 
was  the  only  force  sufficient  to  crystallize  the  loose  ingredients 
of  Israel  into  a  nation.  But  the  same  national  crisis  which 
created  the  kingship  also  inaugurated  the  higher  career  of 
the  prophetic  order.  There  had  been  prophets  in  Israel 
before ;  they  were  a  rehgious  phenomenon  common  to  all  the 
Semitic  peoples.  But  they  had  been  mainly  soothsayers, 
using  their  clairvoyant  powers  for  any  one  who  needed  them 
and  paid  them  for  their  service.  Their  ecstatic  raptures  and 
their  predictions  had  not  been  based  on  any  fundamental 
moral  convictions.  The  patriotic  enthusiasm  of  the  uprising 
against  Philistine  domination  began  to  lift  the  prophets  clear 
of  the  function  and  the  magical  implements  of  soothsaying. 


24  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

and  cut  them  loose  from  ceremonial  ritual  in  general.  These 
functions  now  fell  to  the  priests.  This  was  "probably  the 
very  greatest  relief  which  prophecy  experienced  in  the  course 
of  its  evolution."  ^  Henceforth  they  were  free  to  take  that 
independent  or  hostile  attitude  to  ritual  religion  to  which  we 
have  referred,  and  their  predictions  henceforth  were  national 
in  scope  and  based  on  fundamental  moral  laws  and  convic- 
tions. Thus  patriotism  was  the  emancipating  power  which 
set  the  feet  of  the  prophetic  order  on  that  new  and  higher  path 
which  was  destined  to  lift  them  far  above  the  soothsayers  of 
other  nations  with  whom  they  started  on  a  common  level. 
That  religious  passion  which  had  turned  against  a  foreign 
invader  was  equally  ready  to  turn  against  the  domestic 
oppressors  of  the  people. 

The  new  series  of  prophets  which  began  with  Amos  about 
755  B.C.  was  summoned  to  action  by  a  vaster  danger  than 
that  of  the  Philistine  invaders.  The  empire  of  Assyria  was 
rising  on  the  Eastern  horizon  like  a  cyclone-cloud.  It  moved 
down  on  the  cluster  of  little  kingdoms  in  Syria  and  Palestine 
with  irresistible  force.  Assyria  was  the  first  of  those  great 
powers  which  were  destined  to  grind  up  the  tribal  nationalities 
of  the  ancient  Orient  and  out  of  the  detritus  to  form  new  con- 
glomerate formations  on  a  grander  scale.  What  Assyria 
began,  Chaldea  and  the  Greeks  continued  and  the  Romans 
completed.  We  can  see  now  that  the  process  was  inevitable 
and  necessary  for  the  development  of  a  wider  and  higher 
civilization,  but  for  those  who  got  between  the  millstones,  it 
was  terror  and  agony.  Napoleon  playing  at  nine-pins  with 
the  kingdoms  of  Europe,  or  the  white  race  dividing  the  earth 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  are  mild  modem  parallels. 

1  G.  A.  Smith,  "The  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets,"  I,  23. 


THE   HISTORICAL   ROOTS   OF   CHRISTIANITY  25 

Now,  to  all  the  nations  their  gods  were  fundamentally  the 
national  gods.  Every  tribe  had  its  god  and  every  god  had  his 
tribe.  Each  people  relied  on  the  national  god  to  preserve  the 
nation.  If  the  nation  suffered  some  temporary  defeat  and  dis- 
aster, the  people  were  either  angry  with  their  god  because  he 
was  inefficient  and  idle,  or  they  cringed  before  him  because  he 
was  angry.  But  when  a  nation  was  annihilated,  it  meant  the 
collapse  of  the  national  faith  and  religion.  Such  a  nation 
would  hear  the  scoff  of  its  neighbors :"  Where  is  now  thy  god?" 

This  catastrophe  of  despair  and  disillusionment  which 
brought  other  national  religions  to  the  ground  amid  the  wreck 
of  the  nations  that  held  them,  threatened  Israel  too.  The 
prophets  saved  the  faith  of  the  people.  They  even  taught 
the  people  to  rise  on  the  ruins  of  their  national  past  to  a 
higher  faith.  The  religion  of  the  prophets  was  not  based  on 
local  shrines  or  sacrifices,  but  on  moral  law.  They  asserted 
that  Jehovah  is  fundamentally  a  god  of  righteousness,  and  a 
god  of  Israel  only  in  so  far  as  Israel  was  a  nation  of  righteous- 
ness. The  popular  feeling  was  that  if  the  people  stood  by 
Jehovah,  he  was  in  duty  bound  to  stand  by  them  against  all 
comers.  They  expected  their  god  to  act  on  the  maxim: 
"My  country,  right  or  wrong."  The  prophets  denied  it. 
They  repudiated  the  idea  of  favoritism  in  the  divine  govern- 
ment. God  moves  on  the  plane  of  universal  and  impartial 
ethical  law.  Assyria  belongs  to  him  as  well  as  Israel.  He 
would  live  and  be  just  even  if  Israel  was  broken.  Israel  was 
not  a  pet  child  that  would  escape  the  rod.  Its  prerogative 
was  the  revelation  of  God's  will  and  not  any  immunity  from 
the  penalties  of  the  moral  law.  The  relation  of  the  nation  to 
Jehovah  was  not  a  natural  right  and  privilege,  but  rested  on 
moral  conditions. 


26  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

Thus  the  same  historical  catastrophe  which  wrecked  the 
faith  of  others  lifted  the  prophets  to  a  higher  faith.  Their 
religion  became  international  in  its  horizon  and  more  pro- 
foundly ethical.  Had  their  piety  previously  been  narrow  in 
its  outlook  and  ritual  in  its  character,  it  would  now  have 
suffered  shipwreck.  The  Assyrian  riddle  would  have  been 
insoluble.  Because  they  were  men  of  large  interest,  new 
occasions  under  the  inspiration  of  God  were  able  to  teach 
them  new  duties  and  new  truths.  They  added  new  terms 
to  the  synthesis  of  truth.  Their  new  faith  at  first  seemed 
to  the  people  a  blasphemous  denial  of  religion.  When  the 
events  which  they  had  foretold  were  actually  fulfilled,  the 
prophetic  books  became  the  support  and  stay  on  which 
popular  religion  slowly  climbed  to  new  life. 

We  are  often  told  that  ministers  who  concern  themselves 
in  political  and  social  questions  are  likely  to  lose  their  spiritual 
power  and  faith.  Professor  George  Adam  Smith,  in  dis- 
cussing the  development  of  prophetic  religion,  says  on  the 
contrary:  "Confine  religion  to  the  personal,  it  grows  rancid, 
morbid.  Wed  it  to  patriotism,  it  lives  in  the  open  air,  and 
its  blood  is  pure."  ^  I  do  not  think  so  sweeping  a  generali- 
zation about  purely  private  rehgion  is  just.  But  those  who 
hold  that  the  flower  of  religion  can  be  raised  only  in  flower- 
pots will  have  to  make  their  reckoning  with  the  prophets  of 
Israel.  The  very  book  on  which  they  feed  their  private 
devotion  and  that  entire  religion  out  of  which  Christianity 
grew,  took  shape  through  a  divine  inspiration  which  found 
its  fittest  and  highest  organs  in  a  series  of  political  and  social 
preachers.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  "ethical  monotheism" 
which  has  been  Israel's  invaluable  contribution  to  the  reli- 

»  G.  A.  Smith,  "  The  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets,"  I,  25, 


THE   HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  27 

gious  life  of  humanity,  would  never  have  developed  and  sur- 
vived if  the  prophets  had  from  the  outset  limited  their  religion 
in  the  way  in  which  we  are  nowadays  advised  to  limit  it. 

That  virility  and  humaneness  of  the  prophets  and  that  The  late 
capacity  for  growth  which  stir  our  enthusiasm  were  largely  ^ivSual 
due   to   the    breadth   and    inclusiveness   of    their   religious 
sympathy  and  faith.     All  the  world  was  God's  field;  all  the 
affairs  of  the  nation  were  the  affairs  of  religion.     Every  great 
event  in  history  taught  them  a  lesson  in  theology. 

This  type  of  religion  was  destroyed  when  the  national  life 
itself  was  destroyed  by  the  foreign  conquerors.  The  nation 
had  been  the  subject  of  prophecy,  and  now  the  nation  as  such 
was  blotted  out.  How  could  the  prophets  any  longer  appeal 
for  national  righteousness,  when  it  was  not  at  the  option  of  the 
people  to  be  righteous?  Political  agitation  among  a  people 
under  jealous  foreign  despotism  would  mean  revolutionary 
agitation  and  would  never  be]  tolerated.  Thus  all  the  reli- 
gious passion  and  reflection  which  had  formerly  flowed  into 
social  and  political  channels  was  dammed  up  and  turned 
back.  Prayer  and  private  devoutness  in  pious  individuals 
and  in  groups  of  pious  men  was  the  only  field  left  to  the 
religious  impulse.  The  rehgious  history  and  the  ceremonial 
worship  of  Israel  were  the  only  bond  of  national  unity  that 
survived. 

Jeremiah  began  the  turn  toward  individual  piety.  The 
nation  was  breaking  up  about  him.  His  prophetic  activity 
had  failed ;  the  people  refused  to  believe  that  his  words  were 
the  word  of  Jehovah.  But  he  heard  the  insistent  inner  voice 
of  God,  and  the  consciousness  of  this  personal  communion 
with  Jehovah  was  his  stay  and  comfort.    Through  his  very 


28  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

failure  and  sufferings  a  tender  personal  relation  developed 
between  the  soul  of  the  prophet  and  his  God.  Other  choice 
spirits  were  in  the  same  situation.  The  influence  of  Jere- 
miah's writings  reproduced  in  others  that  personal  piety 
which  was  the  outcome  of  his  peculiar  experience.  For 
religious  experience  has  a  remarkable  capacity  for  perpetuat- 
ing and  reproducing  its  type;  witness  the  Confessions  of 
Saint  Augustine  and  the  mysticism  of  Saint  Bernard.  Je- 
hovah had  been  the  God  of  the  nation,  and  the  God  of  the 
individual  in  so  far  as  he  was  part  of  the  nation.  Now  the 
nation  was  gone,  and  the  righteous  and  lowly  in  their  suffer- 
ing and  isolation  stretched  the  lonely  hand  of  faith  to 
him  and  found  him  near  with  a  personal  touch  of  love  and 
comfort.  Thus  the  death-pangs  of  the  national  Hfe  were  the 
birth-pangs  of  the  personal  rehgious  life. 

This  was  a  wonderful  triumph  of  religion,  an  evidence  of 
the  indestructibihty  of  the  religious  impulse.  It  was  fraught 
with  far-reaching  importance  for  the  future  of  religion  and  of 
humanity  in  general.  The  subtlest  springs  of  human  person- 
ality were  liberated  when  the  individual  realized  that  he 
personally  was  dear  to  God  and  could  work  out  his  salva- 
tion not  as  a  member  of  his  nation,  but  as  a  man  by  virtue 
of  his  humanity. 

The  value  of  this  religious  achievement  has  so  impressed 
the  students  of  Hebrew  religious  history  that  they  have  fre- 
quently assumed  that  this  change  in  religion  was  pure  gain. 
The  real  edifice  of  religion  in  the  individual  soul  was  now 
ready  to  stand  for  itself,  they  say,  and  the  scaffolding  of 
pohtical  and  social  rehgion  could  be  torn  down  and  its  plank- 
ing abandoned.  It  is  assumed  that  Jeremiah  and  those  who 
followed  him  recognized  that  the  external  means  of  reahzing 


THE    HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  29 

the  ideal  theocracy  had  failed,  and  they  now  set  themselves 
deliberately  to  build  a  new  religious  community  of  regenerate 
souls.  They  turned  their  back  on  the  Jewish  nation  and 
created  the  Jewish  church. 

That  seems  to  me  a  misleading  construction  of  the  historical 
situation.  It  is  true  that  the  progress  of  religion  toward  spir- 
ituahty  was  sure  to  make  rehgion  more  personal.  But  every 
new  religious  synthesis  should  contain  all  that  was  good  and 
true  in  the  old.  If  the  religious  value  of  the  individual  was 
being  discovered,  why  should  the  rehgious  value  of  the  com- 
munity be  forgotten?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  concentra- 
tion of  religious  life  in  the  individual  was  not  a  deliberate  step 
of  progress,  freely  taken,  but  was  forced  upon  these  men  by 
dire  necessity.  Religion  found  the  broad  plains  of  national 
life  destroyed  and  in  possession  of  the  enemy,  and  it  re- 
treated into  the  mountain  fastnesses  of  individual  soul-life. 
It  is  a  triumph  of  religious  faith  if  a  man  who  is  crippled  for 
life,  and  confined  to  a  hopeless  bed  of  pain  and  uselessness, 
still  keeps  his  faith  in  God  intact,  or  even  develops  so  strong 
a  trust  in  him  who  has  slain  him  that  others  come  to  his  bed- 
side to  draw  faith  from  his  mere  look  and  existence.  But 
that  is  not  normal  rehgion.  Religion  is  the  hallowing  of  all 
life,  and  its  health-giving  powers  are  always  impaired  if  it 
is  denied  free  access  to  some  of  the  organs  through  which  it 
fulfils  its  functions.  Moreover,  even  with  the  prophets  of 
the  Exile,  the  restoration  of  the  nation  was  the  controUing 
desire.  They  insisted  on  personal  holiness,  not  because 
that  was  the  end  of  all  rehgion,  but  because  it  was  the 
condition  and  guarantee  of  national  restoration.  Personal 
religion  was  chiefly  a  means  to  an  end ;    the  end  was  social. 

We  can  appreciate  to  the  full  the  significance  and  value  of 


30  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

the  personal  religion  developed  under  the  abnormal  con- 
ditions of  foreign  domination  and  national  prostration,  and 
yet  recognize  frankly  that  this  gain  had  involved  a  tre- 
mendous loss  and  that  a  religion  developed  under  abnormal 
conditions  is  likely  itself  to  be  abnormal.  This  view  is  con- 
firmed by  the  subsequent  development  of  religious  thought 

v  and  life.  Ezekiel,  who  lived  during  the  Exile,  shows  the 
effect  of  the  separation  between  the  political  and  religious 
interests.  He  too  still  cherishes  the  national  hope.  At  the 
end  of  his  book  he  describes  his  vision  of  Jerusalem  as  he 
hoped  it  would  be  when  restored  and  rebuilt.  The  old  so- 
cial convictions  still  persist;  for  instance,  he  takes  care  to 
provide  for  the  just  distribution  of  the  larid.  And  yet  the 
political  commonwealth  and  the  king  have  become  shadowy ; 
the  memory  of  them  was  growing  dim  and  therefore  the 
hope  of  them  was  vague  and  colorless.  On  the  other  hand 
the  community  of  worshippers  and  the  priests  as  their 
leaders  were  now  vividly  in  the  foreground.  As  a  conse- 
quence the  moral  and  religious  emphasis  had  changed.  His 
ideal  city  was  no  longer  a  city  of  justice  so  much  as  a  city  of 

^  the  true  worship.  The  older  prophets  had  condemned  the 
sins  of  man  against  man,  especially  injustice  and  oppression. 
Ezekiel  dwelt  on  the  sins  of  man  against  God,  especially 
idolatry.     Not  justice  but  holiness  had  become  the  funda- 

^  mental  requirement,  and  holiness  meant  chiefly  ceremonial 
correctness.  The  righteous  nation  was  turned  into  a  holy 
church.  Ezekiel  was  a  prophet  by  calling,  but  he  was  a  priest 
by  birth  and  training,  and  in  comparing  his  hterary  style,  his 
outlook  on  life,  and  his  spiritual  power  with  that  of  the  older 
prophets,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  a  sense  of  religious  deca- 
dence.   The  classical  age  was  past.    Religion  had  grov.p 


THE   HISTORICAL   ROOTS    OF   CHRISTIANITY  31 

narrower  and  feebler  when  it  was  forced  back  from  the  great 
national  and  human  interests  into  an  ecclesiastical  attitude 
of  mind. 

This  impression  deepens  as  we  follow  the  little  colony  of 
Jewish  Puritans  who  returned  to  their  home  and  rebuilt  the 
temple  and  the  city  amid  poverty  and  fear.  We  shall  have 
occasion  hereafter  to  point  out  how  intimately  the  religious 
life  is  connected  with  the  secular  life  in  which  it  develops. 
It  is  unjust  to  expect  that  the  rehgious  life  which  took  form 
in  the  contracted  circle  that  gathered  about  the  rebuilt  shrine 
of  Jehovah  would  have  the  same  bold  originality  and  genius 
that  swept  through  a  hopeful  and  autonomous  nation.  But 
it  is  also  unwise  to  hold  that  type  of  rehgion  up  to  us  as  a 
higher  development  of  religion. 

It  was  an  earnest,  solid  community  of  sifted  and  picked 
religious  men,  with  a  great  preponderance  of  priests.  There 
was  marvellous  courage  and  tenacity,  heroic  loyalty  to  con- 
viction, a  tenderness  of  personal  piety  and  a  devotion  to 
religion  surpassing  that  of  better  times.  But  on  its  serious 
brow  this  rehgion  wore  a  pallid  complexion.  It  became  legal, 
fixed,  monotonous,  a  thing  by  itself,  shut  oflF  from  the  spon- 
taneity and  naturalness  of  the  general  life.  The  prophetic 
voice  was  hushed  and  the  prophetic  fire  died  out.  The  scribe 
now  sat  where  the  prophet  had  stood,  and  the  sacred  book 
took  the  place  of  the  hving  Voice.  There  was  greater  in- 
sistence on  hohness  than  ever,  but  the  conception  of  holiness 
had  insensibly  been  lowered.  The  prophets  had  hfted  the 
expression  of  religion  to  the  ethical  plane.  The  strong 
ethical  ingredient  was  never  again  lost  from  Jewish  religion, 
but  the  ceremonial  ingredient  began  to  mix  with  it  in  larger 
proportions  and  to  become  almost  the  chief  constituent  of 


32  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

holiness.  Religion  became  once  more  priestly  and  ritual, 
with  a  timid  and  legal  reverence  for  externals.  It  was  coming 
to  be  dominated  by  those  influences  which  Jesus  and  Paul 
opposed.  This  was  a  development  similar  to  that  of  Chris- 
tianity when  the  primitive  spirituahty  of  Paul  passed  into  the 
ecclesiasticism  and  ceremoniahsm  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
This  is  not  the  classical  period  of  Israel  to  which  we  turn 
for  inspiration.  Yet  this  is  the  period  when  personal  rehgion 
was  cultivated  and  when  the  teachers  of  religion  did  not 
preach  pohtics,  but  devoted  themselves  to  questions  of  wor- 
ship and  to  church  affairs. 

In  our  personal  Christian  life  every  call  to  duty  is  im- 
mensely strengthened  by  the  large  hope  of  ultimately  attain- 
ing a  Christlike  character  and  the  eternal  life.  That  creates 
the  atmosphere  for  the  details  of  the  religious  life.  In  the 
social  movement  of  our  time  the  single  reformatory  demands 
are  drawing  a  new  and  remarkable  power  from  the  larger 
conception  of  a  reconstitution  of  social  life  on  a  cooperative 
basis.  It  takes  a  great  and  comprehensive  hope  to  kindle 
the  full  power  of  enthusiasm  in  human  lives. 

The  prophets  too  cherished  a  large  ideal  of  the  ultimate 
perfection  of  their  people.  Their  specific  demands  for  justice 
were  reenforced  by  the  conviction  that  these  were  at  the  same 
time  an  approximation  to  that  wider  national  regeneration 
and  a  condition  of  its  final  completion. 

In  the  earliest  age  of  prophetism  there  was  no  distant 
outlook.  Religious  patriots  were  content  if  the  nation  was 
victorious  over  its  enemies  and  could  Hve  in  peace  and  pros- 
perity under  just  kings.  The  development  of  a  larger  national 
hope  was  due  to  a  double  cause.     On  the  one  hand  the 


THE    HISTORICAL   ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  33 

ethical  development  of  the  nation  and  of  its  prophetic  spokes- 
men furnished  a  higher  ideal  standard  by  which  to  measure 
the  present.  As  long  as  a  man  has  a  low  conception  of 
what  a  perfect  human  character  would  imply,  his  idea  of 
salvation  will  consist  in  shght  reforms  of  conduct.  The 
higher  the  conception  of  personal  or  social  possibilities,  the 
larger  is  the  task  set  for  us.  On  the  other  hand  the  doom 
of  the  nation,  first  impending  and  then  actual,  developed  and 
enlarged  the  hope  of  the  prophets.  The  less  they  Hved  by 
sight,  the  more  they  had  to  live  by  faith  in  the  future.  The 
more  acute  the  present  misery,  the  intenser  the  longing  for 
the  better  day  of  God.  We  can  find  a  ready  illustration  of 
this  process  in  modern  life.  Those  classes  which  are  in 
practical  control  of  wealth  and  power  have  practically  no 
reformatory  programme;  they  are  anxious  to  maintain  the 
present  situation  intact.  The  middle  classes,  which  share 
only  partially  in  the  advantages  of  the  present  social  adjust- 
ments, have  a  fist  of  grievances  under  which  they  chafe,  but 
their  social  ideals  do  not  differ  very  radically  from  the  actual 
condition.  They  want  reforms  on  the  basis  of  the  present 
social  order,  and  they  can  reasonably  hope  to  secure  them 
by  peaceful  and  gradual  methods.  But  when  we  descend  to 
the  disinherited  classes,  or  to  those  nations  which  are  forcibly 
held  back  from  political  liberty  and  social  betterment,  the 
chasm  between  their  actual  condition  and  their  desires  grows 
so  wide  that  only  a  revolutionary  lift  can  carry  them  across. 
Thus  under  the  double  influence  of  a  rising  ethical  life  and  a 
declining  national  life,  the  hope  of  the  prophets  became 
wider  and  more  inclusive,  and  also  more  remote,  separated 
from  the  present  by  a  sharper  line. 
With  the  older  prophets  their  social  ideal  was  not  a  Utopian 


34  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

dream  detached  from  present  conditions,  not  a  fair  mirage 
floating  in  the  air.  It  was  within  reahzable  distance.  Its 
feet  were  planted  on  the  actual  social  and  political  situation. 
The  poetic  imagery  used  by  these  Oriental  patriots  is  apt  to 
put  a  rainbow  around  their  ideas,  and  our  prosaic  minds  fail 
to  see  that  they  dealt  with  stem  realities  in  a  sober  way. 
They  had  a  clear-eyed  outlook  on  contemporary  events. 
They  were  religious  men  and  as  such  expected  no  great  crisis 
to  come  except  through's  God's  action.  In  any  national 
regeneration  God  would  have  to  be  the  real  cause  and  force. 
They  pictured  his  interference  under  the  sublime  image  of  a 
royal  advent,  God  coming  to  his  people  on  the  wings  of 
thunder  and  revealing  his  majesty  to  all  the  nations.  This 
"day  of  Jehovah"  would  be  the  decisive  turning-point,  the 
inauguration  of  a  new  epoch  of  history.  It  meant  vengeance 
on  the  foreign  oppressor,  punishment  for  the  wicked,  the 
sifting  of  Israel,  the  rescue  of  the  weak.  Beyond  that  day 
lay  the  golden  age,  in  which  all  men  would  know  God  and 
his  will,  and  the  suffering  of  the  just  would  be  over  forever. 
This  day  of  Jehovah  was  to  the  prophets  what  the  social 
revolution  is  to  modem  radical  reformers,  but  expressed  in 
terms  of  fervent  religious  faith;  therefore  its  real  goal  was 
moral  justice  rather  than  economic  prosperity,  and  it  was  to 
come  by  divine  help  and  not  by  mere  social  evolution. 

When  the  life  of  the  nation  withered  away  under  the  mailed 
fist  of  an  alien  power  and  the  attainment  of  future  improve- 
ments was  torn  from  its  control,  the  character  of  the  national 
hope  underwent  a  gradual  change.  It  was  never  surrendered. 
However  individualistic  rehgion  became,  it  never  abandoned 
the  collective  hope  as  the  real  consummation  of  religion. 
The  restoration  of  the  temple  after  the  Exile  was  hailed  as  a 


THE   HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  35 

pledge  of  the  national  restoration  that  was  to  follow.  The 
tense  personal  obedience  to  the  minutiae  of  the  Law  in  post- 
exilic  Judaism  was  only  the  condition  for  the  full  blessing  of 
God  on  the  nation.  Jehovah  was  always  the  God  of  an  or- 
ganized society  and  not  of  a  disconnected  mass  of  individuals. 
The  Book  of  Daniel  is  an  interpretation  of  international  re- 
lations and  events,  a  programme  for  history  to  follow.  But 
when  the  weight  of  foreign  empire  was  so  overwhelming  and 
crushing  that  even  the  boldest  hope  could  see  no  adequate 
resources  in  the  people,  the  catastrophe  that  would  break 
this  power  was  conceived  as  a  supernatural  cataclysm  out  of 
all  relation  to  human  activity.  By  contact  with  foreign 
religious  life  during  the  Exile  the  belief  in  a  great  organized 
kingdom  of  evil  had  become  a  vital  part  of  Jewish  thought, 
and  the  Jews  saw  behind  the  oppressive  human  forces  the 
shadowy  and  sinister  forms  of  demon  powers  that  could  be 
overcome  only  by  archangels  and  heavenly  armies.  When 
religion  was  driven  from  national  interests  into  the  refuge  of 
private  hfe,  it  lost  its  grasp  of  larger  affairs,  and  the  old  clear 
outlook  into  contemporary  history  gave  way  to  an  artificial 
scheme.  Instead  of  reading  present  facts  to  discern  God's 
purposes,  men  began  to  pore  over  the  sacred  books,  and  to 
piece  the  unfulfilled  prophecies  of  the  dead  prophets  into  a 
mosaic  picture  of  the  future.  The  sunhght  of  the  prophetic 
hope  gave  way  to  the  Hmehght  of  the  apocalyptic  visions  of 
later  Judaism. 

It  is  profoundly  pathetic  to  see  how  a  people  paralyzed, 
broken  on  the  rack,  and  almost  destroyed,  still  clung  to  its 
national  existence  and  believed  in  its  political  future.  Even 
the  crudest  dreams  of  apocalypticism  have  a  tragic  dignity 
and  a  Hngering  touch  of  vital  force.     In  those  dreams  the 


36  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Jewish  people  kept  alive  both  their  memories  and  their  hopes, 
much  as  an  impoverished  aristocratic  family  will  preserve  the 
tarnished  swords  and  the  faded  uniforms  worn  by  illustrious 
ancestors  and  nurse  the  hope  in  its  sons  that  they  may  some 
day  regain  the  old  position.  But  it  is  a  mistake  to  look  for 
pohtical  wisdom  in  a  people  that  had  no  pohtics.  Bands  of 
foreign  pohtical  refugees  gathered  in  England  have  often 
dreamed  intensely  of  the  Hberation  of  their  fatherland,  but 
they  have  rarely  planned  wisely,  and  usually  fail  to  take 
account  of  changes  since  they  left  their  home.  Yet  the  un- 
historical  and  artificial  schemes  of  apocalypticism  have  been 
and  are  now  more  influential  in  shaping  the  imagination  of 
Christian  men  about  the  future  course  of  history  than  the 
inspired  thoughts  of  the  great  prophets.  Men  still  rival  the 
rabbis  in  learned  calculations  that  somehow  never  turn  out 
correct,  and  follow  wandering  hghts  which  have  thus  far  dis- 
appointed and  led  astray  all  that  have  ever  followed  them. 

Social  preachers  nowadays  are  very  commonly  charged  with 
being  "  too  pessimistic."  The  same  charge  was  made  against 
the  Hebrew  prophets.  Their  people,  hke  ours,  was  filled 
full  of  cheerful  and  egotistic  optimism,  with  this  distinction 
in  favor  of  the  Hebrews,  that  their  optimism  was  based  on 
religious  faith,  while  ours  is  based  mainly  on  material  wealth. 
Israel  had  the  strongest  of  all  the  gods  for  its  champion,  and 
he  would  surely  see  his  people  through  all  trouble.  Was  not 
Israel  his  dweUing-place  and  did  not  his  people  supply  him 
with  the  sacrifices  which  he  loved  ? 

It  is  significant  that  Amos  first  appeared  at  a  festival  at 
Bethel  and  interrupted  its  revels  with  a  jarring  note,  crying 
that  the  fall  of  the  Northern  kingdom  and  the  exile  of  its 


THE   HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  37 

people  were  impending.  These  prophets  continued  to  be 
disturbers  of  religious  pleasure.  To  the  people  this  seemed 
not  only  unpatriotic  and  disagreeable  pessimism,  but  treason 
and  blasphemy  combined,  for  the  nation  and  Jehovah  were 
one,  and  the  downfall  of  the  one  implied  the  downfall  of  the 
other.  Amos  came  close  to  denying  that  Israel  had  any 
special  rehgious  prerogative  at  all. 

As  Amos  and  Hosea  proclaimed  the  doom  of  the  Northern 
kingdom  in  the  eighth  century,  Jeremiah  proclaimed  the  fall 
of  the  Southern  kingdom  a  century  and  a  half  later.  After 
the  great  reformation  under  Josiah  (623  B.C.),  the  people 
were  full  of  confidence.  They  had  the  temple ;  they  had  the 
Law.  Jeremiah  called  their  faith  a  delusion.  Their  temple 
would  suffer  the  same  fate  as  the  ancient  sanctuary  of  Shiloh. 
He  denied  that  Judah  was  any  better  than  the  sister-kingdom 
had  been.  He  ridiculed  the  optimistic  prophets  who  prophe- 
sied the  "smooth  things"  which  the  people  loved  to  hear. 
He  set  it  up  as  a  general  principle  that  the  true  prophets  had 
always  been  prophets  of  disaster. 

Ezekiel  continued  the  same  strain.  He  had  been  among 
the  first  prominent  exiles  deported  in  597  B.C.  These  men  were 
full  of  hope  for  their  own  speedy  return.  Those  who  were 
left  in  Jerusalem  were  also  full  of  confidence  because  they  were 
now  the  sifted  remnant.  As  long  as  Jerusalem  was  standing, 
Ezekiel  made  it  his  task  to  batter  down  and  discourage  this 
complacent  confidence  and  to  foretell  the  complete  destruc- 
tion of  the  national  life. 

How  would  we  feel  if  a  preacher  should  use  a  public  gather- 
ing on  Decoration  Day  or  Thanksgiving  Day  to  predict  that 
our  country  for  its  mammonism  and  oppression  was  cast  off 
by  God  and  was  to  be  parcelled  out  to  the  Mexicans,  the  Chinese 


38  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

V  and  the  negroes?  In  the  sense  of  our  security  and  strength 
we  should  probably  simply  laugh  at  him.  But  suppose  that 
our  country  was  bleeding  through  disastrous  foreign  wars  and 
invasions,  shaken  by  internal  anarchy,  terrified  and  angry  at 
blows  too  powerful  for  us  to  avert,  and  in  that  condition  a 
preacher  should  "weaken  pubHc  confidence"  still  further  by 
such  a  message  ?  The  vivid  Oriental  imagery  of  the  prophets 
must  not  give  us  the  impression  that  the  injustice  and  cor- 
ruption of  that  day  were  unique.  It  is  impossible  to  make 
accurate  comparisons  of  human  misery,  but  it  may  well  be 
that  the  conditions  against  which  the  moral  sensibility  of  the 
prophets  revolted  could  be  equalled  in  any  modem  industrial 
centre.  And  the  same  sins  ought  to  seem  blacker  nineteen 
centuries  after  Christ  than  eight  centuries  before  Christ. 

Our  prophetic  books  contain  constant  reference  to  the 
"false  prophets."  These  were  not  the  preachers  of  an  idola- 
trous religion,  but  men  who  claimed  to  deliver  the  word  of 
Jehovah.  Neither  were  they  always  conscious  liars.  They 
were  the  mouthpiece  of  the  average  popular  opinion,  and 
they  drew  their  inspiration  from  the  self-satisfied  patriotism 
which  seemed  so  very  identical  with  trust  in  Jehovah  and  his 
sanctuary.  They  were  apparently  the  great  majority  of  the 
prophetic  order;  the  prophets  of  our  Bible  were  the  excep- 
tional men.^  The  "false  prophets"  corresponded  to  those 
modem  preachers  who  act  as  eulogists  of  existing  conditions, 
not  because  they  desire  to  deceive  the  people,  but  because 
they  are  really  so  charmed  with  things  as  they  are  and  have 
never  had  a  vision  from  God  to  shake  their  illusion.  The 
logic  of  events  proved  to  be  on  the  side  of  those  great  Hebrews 
who  asserted  that  black  is  really  black,  even  if  you  call  it 

*  Kuenen,  "Prophets  and  Prophecy  in  Israel,"  60. 


THE   HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  39 

white,  and  that  a  wall  built  with  untempered  mortar  and 
built  out  of  plumb  is  hkely  to  topple.  Because  history  backed 
their  predictions,  they  are  now  in  the  Bible  and  revered  as 
inspired. 

It  is  well  to  note,  however,  that  the  prophets  took  no  vin- 
dictive pleasure  in  prophesying  evil,  as  some  modem  prophets 
enjoy  beating  the  broom  of  God's  vengeance  about  the  ears 
of  the  people.  While  Jeremiah  was  foretelling  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem,  his  heart  was  breaking.  It  is  significant 
that  as  soon  as  the  disaster  had  come,  the  tone  of  prophecy 
changed.  At  long  as  the  people  were  falsely  optimistic,  the 
prophets  persisted  in  destroying  their  illusions.  When  the 
people  were  despairing,  the  prophets  opposed  their  false 
hopelessness.  On  the  ruins  of  the  temple  Jeremiah  foretold 
its  restoration,  the  return  of  the  people,  and  a  new  era  for  his 
desolated  country.  As  soon  as  the  news  of  the  destruction 
of  the  temple  reached  Ezekiel  in  exile,  his  threats  changed 
to  comfort  and  promises.  This  was  not  instability ;  it  was 
loyalty  to  facts  and  hostihty  to  illusions.  Because  they 
believed  in  the  immutability  of  the  moral  law,  they  had  to 
tremble  at  any  departure  from  it,  but  they  cpuld  also  feel  its 
unshaken  strength  under  their  feet  when  all  things  went  to 
pieces  about  them.  These  pessimists  were  really  profoundly 
and  magnificently  optimistic.  They  never  doubted  the  ulti- 
mate victory  of  Jehovah,  of  his  righteousness,  and  of  his 
people.  The  time  may  come  in  our  own  country,  when  the 
smiling  optimists  will  be  the  most  frightened  and  helpless  of 
all,  and  when  the  present  "pessimists"  will  be  the  only  ones 
who  have  any  hopes  to  cheer  and  any  clear  convictions  to 
guide. 

The  great  prophets  whom  we  revere  were  not  those  whom 


40  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

their  own  age  regarded  most.  They  were  the  men  of  the 
opposition  and  of  the  radical  minority.  They  probably  had 
more  influence  over  posterity  than  over  their  own  generation. 
Their  attacks  on  existing  conditions  brought  dangerous  attacks 
upon  them  in  return.  A  later  day  can  always  study  with 
complacency  the  attacks  made  on  the  vested  interests  in  a 
previous  epoch,  and  the  championship  of  eternal  principles 
always  seems  divine  to  a  generation  that  is  not  hurt  by  them. 
Jesus  summed  up  the  impression  left  on  him  by  Old  Testa- 
ment history  by  saying  that  prophets  have  no  honor  in  their 
own  country  and  in  their  own  generation.  It  is  always  pos- 
terity which  builds  their  sepulchres  and  garnishes  their 
tombs. 

The  Hebrew  prophets  shared  the  fate  of  all  leaders  who 
are  far  ahead  of  their  times.  They  did  not  themselves 
achieve  the  triumph  of  their  ideas.  It  was  achieved  for  them 
by  men  who  did  not  share  their  spirit,  and  who  insensibly 
debased  their  ideals  in  realizing  them.  The  ethical  mono- 
theism of  the  prophets  did  not  become  common  property  in 
Judah  till  the  priests  and  scribes  enforced  it.  That  is  part 
of  the  Divine  Comedy  of  history.  The  Tories  carry  out  the 
Liberal  programmes.  The  ideas  preached  by  Socialists  and 
Single  Taxers  are  adopted  by  Populists,  radical  Democrats, 
and  conservative  Republicans  successively,  and  in  coming 
years  the  great  parties  will  take  credit  for  championing  ideas 
which  they  did  their  best  to  stifle  and  then  to  betray.  It  is  a 
beneficent  scheme  by  which  the  joy  of  life  is  evened  up. 
The  "practical  men"  and  conservatives  have  the  pleasure  of 
feeling  that  they  are  the  only  ones  who  can  really  make  re- 
forms work.  The  prophetic  minds  have  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  the  world  must  come  their  way  whether  it  will 


THE    HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF    CHRISTIANITY  4I 

or  not,  because  they  are  on  the  way  to  justice,  and  justice 
is  on  the  way  to  God. 

Here  then  we  have  a  succession  of  men  perhaps  unique  in  Summary, 
religious  history  for  their  moral  heroism  and  spiritual  insight. 
They  were  the  moving  spirits  in  the  religious  progress  of  their 
nation ;  the  creators,  directly  or  indirectly,  of  its  law,  its  his- 
torical and  poetical  literature,  and  its  piety ;  the  men  to  whose 
personality  and  teaching  Jesus  felt  most  kinship;  the  men 
who  still  kindle  modem  religious  enthusiasm.  Most  of  us  be- 
lieve that  their  insight  was  divinely  given  and  that  the  course 
they  steered  was  set  for  them  by  the  Captain  of  history. 

We  have  seen  that  these  men  were  almost  indifferent,  if  not 
contemptuous,  about  the  ceremonial  side  of  customary  reli- 
gion, but  turned  with  passionate  enthusiasm  to  moral  right- 
eousness as  the  true  domain  of  religion.  Where  would  their 
interest  lie  if  they  lived  to-day  ? 

We  have  seen  that  their  religious  concern  was  not  restricted 
to  private  religion  and  morality,  but  dealt  preeminently  with 
the  social  and  political  life  of  their  nation.  Would  they  limit 
its  range  to-day? 

We  have  seen  that  their  sympathy  was  wholly  and  pas- 
sionately with  the  poor  and  oppressed.     If  they  lived  to-day,  i 
would  they  place  the  chief  blame  for  poverty  on  the  poor 
and  give  their  admiration  to  the  strong? 

We  have  seen  that  they  gradually  rose  above  the  kindred 
prophets  of  other  nations  through  their  moral  interest  in 
national  affairs,  and  that  their  spiritual  progress  and  educa- 
tion were  intimately  connected  with  their  open-eyed  com- 
prehension of  the  larger  questions  of  contemporary  history. 
Is  it  likely  that  the  same  attitude  of  mind  which  enlarged  and 


42  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

purified  the  religion  of  the  Hebrew  leaders  would  deteriorate 
and  endanger  the  religion  of  Christian  leaders  ? 

We  have  seen  that  the  religious  concern  in  pohtics  ceased 
only  when  politics  ceased ;  that  religious  individualism  was  a 
triumph  of  faith  under  abnormal  conditions  and  not  a  normal 
type  of  religious  life;  and  that  the  enforced  withdrawal  of 
religion  from  the  wider  life  was  one  cause  for  the  later  nar- 
rowness of  Judaism.  Does  this  warrant  the  assumption  that 
religion  is  most  normal  when  it  is  most  the  affair  of  the 
individual  ? 

We  have  seen  that  the  sane  political  programme  and  the 
wise  historical  insight  of  the  great  prophets  turned  into 
apocalyptic  dreams  and  bookish  calculations  when  the  nation 
lost  its  political  self-government  and  training.  How  wise  is 
it  for  the  Christian  leaders  of  a  democratic  nation  to  take 
their  interpretation  of  God's  purposes  in  history  and  their 
theories  about  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God  from  the 
feeblest  and  most  decadent  age  of  Hebrew  thought? 

We  have  seen  that  the  true  prophets  opposed  the  com- 
placent optimism  of  the  people  and  of  their  popular  spokes- 
men, and  gave  warning  of  disaster  as  long  as  it  was  coming. 
If  they  lived  among  the  present  symptoms  of  social  and  moral 
decay,  would  they  sing  a  lullaby  or  sound  the  reveille  ? 

No  true  prophet  will  copy  a  prophet.  Their  garb,  their 
mannerisms  of  language,  the  vehemence  of  their  style,  belong 
to  their  age  and  not  to  ours.  But  if  we  believe  in  their  divine 
mission  and  in  the  divine  origin  of  the  religion  in  which  they 
were  the  chief  factors,  we  cannot  repudiate  what  was  fimda- 
mental  in  their  lives.  If  any  one  holds  that  religion  is  essen- 
tially ritual  and  sacramental;  or  that  it  is  purely  personal; 
or  that  God  is  on  the  side  of  the  rich ;  or  that  social  interest 


THE   HISTORICAL    ROOTS    OF   CHRISTIANITY  43 

is  likely  to  lead  preachers  astray;  he  must  prove  his  case 
with  his  eye  on  the  Hebrew  prophets,  and  the  burden  of 
proof  is  with  him. 

For  the  ordinary  reader  who  may  wish  to  follow  up  the  subject,  I 
know  no  book  more  generally  accessible  and  more  delightful  than  the 
two  volumes  in  the  "  Expositor's  Bible  "  on  "  The  Book  of  the  Twelve 
Prophets,"  by  George  Adam  Smith;  especially  the  introductory  chap- 
ters in  each  volume. 

I  think  it  is  only  honest  to  state  that  the  Old  Testament  has  never 
been  my  professional  specialty  and  the  foregoing  discussion  lays  no 
claim  to  authority.  Doubtless  the  expert  student  will  notice  inaccura- 
cies in  detail.  But  if  he  differs  in  fundamentals,  the  difference  is  not 
likely  to  be  due  to  such  minor  points  of  information,  but  to  his  general 
conceptions  of  history  and  religion. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  SOCIAL  AIMS   OF  JESUS  ^ 

A  MAN  was  walking  through  the  woods  in  springtime.  The 
air  was  thriUing  and  throbbing  with  the  passion  of  httle 
hearts,  with  the  love-wooing,  the  parent  pride,  and  the  deadly 
fear  of  the  birds.  But  the  man  never  noticed  that  there  was 
a  bird  in  the  woods.  He  was  a  botanist  and  was  looking  for 
plants. 

A  man  was  walking  through  the  streets  of  a  city,  pondering 
the  problems  of  wealth  and  national  well-being.  He  saw  a 
child  sitting  on  the  curbstone  and  crying.  He  met  children 
at  play.  He  saw  a  young  mother  with  her  child  and  an  old 
man  with  his  grandchild.  But  it  never  occurred  to  him  that 
little  children  are  the  foundation  of  society,  a  chief  motive 
power  in  economic  effort,  the  most  influential  teachers,  the 
source  of  the  purest  pleasures,  the  embodiment  of  form  and 
color  and  grace.  The  man  had  never  had  a  child  and  his 
eyes  were  not  opened. 

A  man  read  through  the  New  Testament.  He  felt  no  vibra- 
tion of  social  hope  in  the  preaching  of  John  the  Baptist  and 
in  the  shouts  of  the  crowd  when  Jesus  entered  Jerusalem. 

^  Those  who  read  only  EngHsh  are  fortunate  in  having  at  their  command 
two  excellent  books  on  the  subject  of  this  chapter:  "Jesus  Christ  and  the 
Social  Question,"  by  Professor  Francis  G.  Peabody  of  Harvard,  and  "  The 
Social  Teaching  of  Jesus,"  by  Professor  Shailer  Mathews  of  the  University 
of  Chicago.  The  former  is  very  sympathetic  in  its  treatment;  the  latter 
perhaps  more  incisive  in  its  methods. 

44 


THE    SOCIAL    AIMS    OF    JESUS  45 

He  caught  no  revolutionary  note  in  the  Book  of  Revelation. 
The  social  movement  had  not  yet  reached  him.  Jesus  knew 
human  nature  when  he  reiterated:  "He  that  hath  ears  to 
hear,  let  him  hear." 

We  see  in  the  Bible  what  we  have  been  taught  to  see  there. 
We  drop  out  great  sets  of  facts  from  our  field  of  vision.  We 
read  other  things  into  the  Bible  which  are  not  there.  During 
the  Middle  Ages  men  thought  they  saw  their  abstruse  scholas- 
tic philosophy  and  theology  amid  the  simplicity  of  the  gospels. 
They  found  in  the  epistles  the  priests  and  bishops  whom 
they  knew,  with  robe  and  tonsure,  living  a  celibate  life  and 
obeying  the  pope.  When  the  Revival  of  Learning  taught 
men  to  read  all  books  with  literary  appreciation  and  historic 
insight,  many  things  disappeared  from  the  Bible  for  their 
eyes,  and  new  things  appeared.  A  new  language  was  abroad 
and  the  Bible  began  to  speak  that  language.  If  the  Bible 
was  not  a  living  power  before  the  Reformation,  it  was 
not  because  the  Bible  was  chained  up  and  forbidden,  as  we 
are  told,  but  because  their  minds  were  chained  by  precon- 
ceived ideas,  and  when  they  read,  they  failed  to  read. 

We  are  to-day  in  the  midst  of  a  revolutionary  epoch  fully 
as  thorough  as  that  of  the  Renaissance  and  Reformation.  It 
is  accompanied  by  a  reinterpretation  of  nature  and  of  his- 
tory. The  social  movement  has  helped  to  create  the  modem 
study  of  history.  Where  we  used  to  see  a  panorama  of  wars 
and  strutting  kings  and  court  harlots,  we  now  see  the  struggle 
of  the  people  to  wrest  a  living  from  nature  and  to  shake  off 
their  oppressors.  The  new  present  has  created  a  new  past. 
The  French  Revolution  was  the  birth  of  modem  democracy, 
and  also  of  the  modem  school  of  history. 

The  Bible  shares  in  that  new  social  reinterpretation.     The 


>/ 


46  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

Stories  of  the  patriarchs  have  a  new  lifelikeness  when  they 
are  read  in  the  setting  of  primitive  social  hfe.  There  are 
texts  and  allusions  in  the  New  Testament  which  had  been 
passed  by  as  of  slight  significance ;  now  they  are  like  windows 
through  which  we  see  miles  of  landscape.  But  it  is  a  slow 
process.  The  men  who  write  commentaries  are  usually  of 
ripe  age  and  their  lines  of  interest  were  fixed  before  the  social 
movement  awoke  men.  They  follow  the  traditions  of  their 
craft  and  deal  with  the  same  questions  that  engaged  their 
predecessors.  Eminent  theologians,  like  other  eminent 
thinkers,  live  in  the  social  environment  of  wealth  and  to  that 
extent  are  slow  to  see.  The  individualistic  conception  of 
religion  is  so  strongly  fortified  in  theological  literature  and 
ecclesiastical  institutions  that  its  monopoly  cannot  be  broken 
in  a  hurry.  It  will  take  a  generation  or  two  for  the  new 
social  comprehension  of  religion  to  become  common  property. 
The  first  scientific  life  of  Christ  was  written  in  1829  by 
Karl  Hase.  Christians  had  always  bowed  in  worship  before 
their  Master,  but  they  had  never  undertaken  to  understand 
his  life  in  its  own  historical  environment  and  his  teachings 
in  the  sense  in  which  Jesus  meant  them  to  be  understood  by 
his  hearers.  He  had  stood  like  one  of  his  pictures  in  Byzantine 
art,  splendid  against  its  background  of  gold,  but  unreal  and 
unhuman.  Slowly,  and  still  with  many  uncertainties  in  de- 
tail, his  figure  is  coming  out  of  the  past  to  meet  us.  He  has 
begun  to  talk  to  us  as  he  did  to  his  Galilean  friends,  and  the 
better  we  know  Jesus,  the  more  social  do  his  thoughts  and 
aims  become. 


Jesus  not  a       Under  the  influence  of  this  new  historical  study  of  Christ, 

socirI  rC" 

former.         and  under  the  pressure  of  the  intense  new  social  interest  in 


THE    SOCIAL    AIMS    OF   JESUS  47 

contemporary  life,  the  pendulum  is  now  swinging  the  other 
way.  ]\Ien  are  seizing  on  Jesus  as  the  exponent  of  their  own 
social  convictions.  They  all  claim  him.  "He  was  the  first 
socialist."  "Nay,  he  was  a  Tolstoian  anarchist."  "Not  at  s/ 
all;  he  was  an  upholder  of  law  and  order,  a  fundamental 
opponent  of  the  closed  shop."  It  is  a  great  tribute  to  his 
power  over  men  and  to  the  many-sidedness  of  his  thought 
that  all  seek  shelter  in  his  great  shadow. 

But  in  truth  Jesus  was  not  a  social  reformer  of  the  modem  w 
type.  Sociology  and  political  economy  were  just  as  far  out- 
side of  his  range  of  thought  as  organic  chemistry  or  the 
geography  of  America.  He  saw  the  evil  in  the  life  of  men  and 
their  sufferings,  but  he  approached  these  facts  purely  from 
the  moral,  and  not  from  the  economic  or  historical  point  of 
view.  He  wanted  men  to  live  a  right  life  in  common,  and 
only  in  so  far  as  the  social  questions  are  moral  questions  did 
he  deal  with  them  as  they  confronted  him. 

And  he  was  more  than  a  teacher  of  morality.  Jesus  had 
learned  the  greatest  and  deepest  and  rarest  secret  of  all  — 
how  to  live  a  religious  life.  When  the  question  of  economic  '^ 
wants  is  solved  for  the  individual  and  all  his  outward  adjust- 
ments are  as  comfortable  as  possible,  he  may  still  be  haunted 
by  the  horrible  emptiness  of  his  life  and  feel  that  existence  is 
a  meaningless  riddle  and  delusion.  If  the  question  of  the 
distribution  of  wealth  were  solved  for  all  society  and  all  lived 
in  average  comfort  and  without  urgent  anxiety,  the  question 
would  still  be  how  many  would  be  at  peace  with  their  own 
souls  and  have  that  enduring  joy  and  contentment  which 
alone  can  make  the  outward  things  fair  and  sweet  and  rise 
victorious  over  change.  Universal  prosperity  would  not 
be    incompatible   with    universal    ennui    and    Welischmerz. 


48  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Beyond  the  question  of  economic  distribution  lies  the  ques- 
tion of  moral  relations;  and  beyond  the  moral  relations  to 
men  lies  the  question  of  the  religious  communion  with  that 
spiritual  reality  in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  deep- 
est being  —  with  God,  the  Father  of  our  spirits.  Jesus  had 
V  realized  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man  and  the  life  of  man 
>  in  the  love  of  God.  That  was  the  real  secret  of  his  life,  the 
well-spring  of  his  purity,  his  compassion,  his  unwearied  cour- 
age, his  unquenchable  idealism :  he  knew  the  Father.  But  if 
he  had  that  greatest  of  all  possessions,  the  real  key  to  the  se- 
cret of  life,  it  was  his  highest  social  duty  to  share  it  and  help 
others  to  gain  what  he  had.  He  had  to  teach  men  to  live  as 
children  in  the  presence  of  their  Father,  and  no  longer  as 
slaves  cringing  before  a  despot.  He  had  to  show  them  that 
the  ordinary  life  of  selfishness  and  hate  and  anxiety  and 
chafing  ambition  and  covetousness  is  no  life  at  all,  and  that 
they  must  enter  into  a  new  world  of  love  and  solidarity  and 
inward  contentment.  There  was  no  service  that  he  could 
render  to  men  which  would  equal  that.  All  other  help  lay 
in  concentric  circles  about  that  redemption  of  the  spirit  and 
flowed  out  from  it. 

No  comprehension  of  Jesus  is  even  approximately  true 
which  fails  to  understand  that  the  heart  of  his  heart  was 
religion.  No  man  is  a  follower  of  Jesus  in  the  full  sense 
who  has  not  through  him  entered  into  the  same  life  with 
God.  But  on  the  other  hand  no  man  shares  his  life  with 
God  whose  religion  does  not  flow  out,  naturally  and  without 
^  effort,  into  all  relations  of  his  life  and  reconstructs  everything 
—  that  it  touches.  Whoever  uncouples  the  religious  and  the 
social  life  has  not  understood  Jesus.  Whoever  sets  any 
bounds  for  the  reconstructive  power  of  the  religious  life  over 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS    OF   JESUS  49 

the  social  relations  and  institutions  of  men,  to  that  extent 
denies  the  faith  of  the  Master. 

If  we  want  to  understand  the  real  aims  of  Jesus,  we  must  His  relation 
watch  him  in  his  relation  to  his  own  times.     He  was  not  a  porrrv^™" 
timeless  religious  teacher,  philosophizing  vaguely  on  human  movements, 
generalities.     He  spoke  for  his  own  age,  about  concrete  con- 
ditions, responding  to  the  stirrings  of  the  h'fe  that  surged 
about  him.     We  must  follow  him  in  his  adjustment  to  the 
tendencies  of  the  time,  in  his  affinity  for  some  men  and  his 
repulsion  of  others.     That  is  the  method  by  which  we  classify 
and  locate  a  modem  thinker  or  statesman. 

The  Christian  movement  began  with  John  the  Baptist.  All 
the  evangelists  so  understood  it.^  John  himself  accepted 
Jesus  as  the  one  who  was  to  continue  and  consummate  his 
own  work.  Jesus  linked  John  closely  to  himself.  He  paid 
tribute  to  the  rugged  bravery  and  power  of  the  man,  and  as- 
serted that  the  new  religious  era  had  begun  with  John  as  an  era 
of  strenuous  movement  and  stir.  "  The  Law  and  the  prophets 
were  until  John ;  from  that  time  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  preached,  and  every  man  entereth  violently  into  it."  ^ 

Both  Jesus  and  the  people  generally  felt  that  in  John  they 
had  an  incarnation  of  the  spirit  of  the  ancient  prophets.  He 
wore  their  austere  garb;  he  shared  their  utter  fearlessness, 
their  ringing  directness  of  speech,  their  consciousness  of  speak- 
ing an  inward  message  of  God.  The  substance  of  his  mes- 
sage was  also  the  same.  It  was  the  old  prophetic  demand 
for  ethical  obedience.     He  and  his  disciples  fasted '  and  he 


*  Mark  i ;  Matthew  3 ;  Luke  3 ;  John  i. 

*  Matthew  11.  2-19;  Luke  7.  18-35,  16.  16. 
'Matthew  11.  18,  9.  14. 


50  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

taught  them  certain  forms  of  prayer/  but  in  his  recorded 
teaching  to  the  people  there  is  not  a  word  about  the  customary 
ritual  of  religion,  about  increased  Sabbath  observance,  about 
stricter  washings  and  sacrifices,  or  the  ordinary  exercises  of 
piety.  He  spoke  only  of  repentance,  of  ceasing  from  wrong- 
doing. He  hailed  the  professional  exponents  of  religion  who 
came  to  hear  him,  as  a  brood  of  snakes  wriggling  away  from 
the  flames  of  the  judgment.  He  demolished  the  self-con- 
fidence of  the  Jew  and  his  pride  of  descent  and  religious 
monopoly,  just  as  Amos  or  Jeremiah  did.  If  God  wanted 
children  of  Abraham,  they  were  cheap  and  easy  to  get ;  God 
could  turn  the  pebbles  of  the  Jordan  valley  into  children  of 
Abraham  by  the  million.  But  what  God  wanted,  and  found 
hard  to  get,  was  men  who  would  quit  evil.  Yet  God  was 
bound  to  get  such  and  would  destroy  all  others.  Now  was 
the  time  to  repent  and  by  the  badge  of  baptism  to  enroll  with 
the  purified  remnant.^ 

The  people  asked  for  details.  What  would  repentance 
involve?  "What  then  must  we  do?"  He  replied:  "He 
that  hath  two  coats,  let  him  share  with  him  that  hath  none ; 
and  he  that  hath  food,  let  him  do  likewise."  The  way  to 
prepare  for  the  Messianic  era  and  to  escape  the  wrath  of  the 
Messiah  was  to  institute  a  brotherly  life  and  to  equalize  social 
inequalities.  If  John  thus  conceived  of  the  proper  prepara- 
tion for  the  Messianic  salvation,  how  did  he  conceive  of  the 
Messianic  era  itself  ?  Luke  records  his  advice  to  two  special 
classes  of  men,  the  tax-gatherers  and  the  soldiers.  The  tax- 
gatherers  had  used  their  legal  powers  for  grafting  and  lining 
their  pockets  with  the  excess  extorted  from  the  people.  The 
soldiers  had  used  their  physical  force  for  the  same  ends,  like 

*  Luke  II.  I.  ^Matthew  3.  5-12. 


THE    SOCIAL    AIMS    OF    JESUS  5I 

a  New  York  policeman  taking  a  banana  from  the  push-cart 
while  the  Italian  tries  to  look  pleasant.  John  told  them 
to  stop  being  parasites  and  to  live  on  their  honest  earn- 
ings/ 

Would  any  preacher  have  defined  repentance  in  these 
terms  if  his  eyes  had  not  been  open  to  the  social  inequality 
about  him  and  to  the  exploitation  of  the  people  by  the  repre- 
sentatives of  organized  society?  Luke  characterized  John's 
purpose  by  quoting  the  call  of  Isaiah  to  make  ready  the  way 
of  the  Lord  by  levelhng  down  the  hills  and  levelling  up  the 
valleys  and  making  the  crooked  things  straight.  John  would 
not  have  been  so  silent  about  the  ordinary  requirements  of 
piety,  and  so  terribly  emphatic  in  demanding  the  abolition  of 
social  wrongs,  if  he  had  not  felt  that  here  were  the  real 
obstacles  to  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  From  this 
preaching,  coupled  with  our  general  knowledge  of  the  times, 
we  can  infer  what  his  points  of  view  and  his  hopes  and 
expectations  were,  and  also  what  the  real  spring  of  the 
remarkable  popular  movement  was  which  he  initiated.  It 
was  the  national  hope  of  Israel  that  carried  the  multitudes  into 
the  desert  to  hear  John.  The  judgment  which  he  pro- 
claimed was  not  the  individual  judgment  of  later  Christian 
theology,  but  the  sifting  of  the  Jewish  people  preparatory  to 
establishing  the  renewed  Jewish  theocracy.  The  kingdom 
of  God  which  he  announced  as  close  at  hand  was  the  old  hope 
of  the  people,  and  that  embraced  the  restoration  of  the 
Davidic  kingdom,  the  reign  of  social  justice,  and  the  triumph 
of  the  true  religion,  John  was  a  true  descendant  of  the 
prophets  in  denying  that  Jewish  descent  constituted  a  claim 
to  share  in  the  good  time  coming.  He  put  the  kingdom  on 
'  Luke  3.  10-14. 


52  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

an  ethical  basis.  But  it  was  still  a  social  hope  and  it  re- 
quired social  morality.  According  to  our  evangelists  the 
work  of  John  came  to  an  end  because  he  had  attacked 
Herod  Antipas  for  his  marriage  with  Herodias.^  According 
to  Josephus  ^  it  was  because  Herod  feared  the  great  influence 
of  John  over  the  people  and  wanted  to  forestall  a  revo- 
lutionary rising  under  his  impulse.  The  two  explanations 
are  not  incompatible.  Josephus  had  very  direct  lines  of 
information  about  John  ^  and  his  intimation  deserves  the 
more  weight  because  his  book  was  written  for  a  Roman 
audience  and  his  general  tendency  was  to  pass  with  discreet 
silence  the  revolutionary  tendencies  in  his  people. 

Now  Jesus  accepted  John  as  the  forerunner  of  his  own 
work.  It  was  the  popular  movement  created  by  John  which 
brought  Jesus  out  of  the  seclusion  of  Nazareth.  He  received 
John's  baptism  as  the  badge  of  the  new  Messianic  hope  and 
repentance.  His  contact  with  John  and  the  events  at  the 
Jordan  were  evidently  of  decisive  importance  in  the  progress 
of  his  own  inner  life  and  his  Messianic  consciousness.  When 
he  left  the  Jordan  the  power  of  his  own  mission  was  upon  him. 
He  took  up  the  formula  of  John :  "The  kingdom  of  God  has 
come  nigh;  repent!"  He  continued  the  same  baptism.  He 
drew  his  earliest  and  choicest  disciples  from  the  followers  of 
John.  When  John  was  dead,  some  thought  Jesus  was  John 
risen  from  the  dead.  He  realized  clearly  the  difference 
between  the  stem  ascetic  spirit  of  the  Baptist  and  his  own 
V  sunny  trust  and  simple  human  love/  but  to  the  end  of  his 

*  Matthew  14.  3-5. 

*  Josephus,  "  Antiquities,"  XVIII,  5,  2. 
■/' Renan,  "Life  of  Jesus,"  152-153. 

*  Matthew  11.  16-19;  Mark  2,  18-22. 


THE   SOCIAL    AIMS    OF   JESUS  53 

life  he  championed  John  and  dared  the  Pharisees  to  deny  his 
divine  mission/  It  seems  impossible  to  assume  that  his  own 
fundamental  purpose,  at  least  in  the  beginning  of  his  ministry, 
was  wholly  divergent  from  that  of  John.  In  the  main  he 
shared  John's  national  and  social  hope.  His  aim  too  was  the 
realization  of  the  theocracy. 

Moreover,  in  joining  hands  with  John,  Jesus  clasped 
hands  with  the  entire  succession  of  the  prophets  with  whom 
he  classed  John.  Their  words  were  his  favorite  quotations. 
Like  them  he  disregarded  or  opposed  the  ceremonial  elements 
of  religion  and  insisted  on  the  ethical.  Like  them  he  sided 
with  the  poor  and  oppressed.  As  Amos  and  Jeremiah  fore- 
saw the  conflict  of  their  people  with  the  Assyrians  and  the 
Chaldeans,  so  Jesus  foresaw  his  nation  drifting  toward  the 
conflict  with  Rome,  and  like  them  he  foretold  disaster,  the 
fall  of  the  temple  and  of  the  holy  city.  That  prophetic  type 
of  religion  which  we  have  tried  to  set  forth  in  the  previous 
chapter,  and  which  constituted  the  chief  religious  heritage 
of  his  nation,  had  laid  hold  on  Jesus  and  he  had  laid  hold  of 
it  and  had  appropriated  its  essential  spirit.  In  the  poise  and 
calm  of  his  mind  and  manner,  and  in  the  love  of  his  heart,  he 
was  infinitely  above  them  all.^  But  the  greatest  of  all  proph- 
ets was  still  one  of  the  prophets,  and  that  large  interest  in  the 
national  and  social  life  which  had  been  inseparable  from  the 
religion  of  the  prophets  was  part  of  his  life  too.  The  pre- 
sumption is  that  Jesus  shared  the  fundamental  religious 
purpose  of  the  prophets.  If  any  one  asserts  that  he  aban- 
doned the  collective  hope  and  gave  his  faith  solely  to  religious 

*  Mark  ii.  27-33. 

^  This  superiority  is  beautifully  expressed  in  Wellhausen's  "  Israelitische 
und  Jiidische  Geschichte,"  Chapter  XXIV. 


54  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

individualism,  he  will  have  to  furnish  express  statements  in 
which  Jesus  disavows  the  religious  past  of  his  people. 

The  pur-  The  historical   background  which  we  have  just  sketched 

fesus°  the  "^^^^  ^^^^  ^^  ^^P^  ^^  mind  in  understanding  the  life  and 
kingdom  of  purpose  of  Jesus.  He  was  not  merely  an  initiator,  but  a 
consummator.  Like  all  great  minds  that  do  not  merely 
imagine  Utopias,  but  actually  advance  humanity  to  a  new 
epoch,  he  took  the  situation  and  material  furnished  to  him 
by  the  past  and  moulded  that  into  a  fuller  approximation  to 
the  divine  conception  within  him.  He  embodied  the  pro- 
phetic stream  of  faith  and  hope.  He  linked  his  work  to  that 
of  John  the  Baptist  as  the  one  contemporary  fact  to  which  he 
felt  most  inward  affinity. 

Jesus  began  his  preaching  with  the  call:  "The  time  is 
fulfilled ;  the  kingdom  of  God  is  now  close  at  hand ;  repent 
and  believe  in  the  glad  news."^  The  kingdom  of  God 
continued  to  be  the  centre  of  all  his  teaching  as  recorded  by 
the  synoptic  gospels.  His  parables,  his  moral  instructions, 
and  his  prophetic  predictions  all  bear  on  that. 

We  have  no  definition  of  what  he  meant  by  the  phrase. 
His  audience  needed  no  definition.  It  was  then  a  familiar 
conception  and  phrase.  The  new  thing  was  simply  that  this 
kingdom  was  at  last  on  the  point  of  coming. 

We  are  not  at  all  in  that  situation  to-day.  Any  one  who 
has  tried  to  grasp  the  idea  will  have  realized  how  vague  and 
elusive  it  seems.  It  stands  to-day  for  quite  a  catalogue  of 
ideas.^    To  the  ordinary  reader  of  the  Bible,  "inheriting 

'  Mark  i,  15. 

^  See  the  list  of  definitions  in  Shailer  Mathews,  "  The  Social  Teaching  of 
Jesus,"  S3,  note  i. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS   OF   JESUS  55 

the  kingdom  of  heaven^"  simply  means  being  saved  and 
going  to  heaven.  For  others  it  means  the  millennium.  For 
some  the  organized  Churchi_for  others  "the  invisible 
Church."  For  the  mystic  it  means  the  hidden  life  with  God. 
The  truth  is  that  the  idea  in  the  sense  in  which  Jesus  and  his 
audiences  understood  it  almost  completely  passed  out  of 
Christian  thought  as  soon  as  Christianity  passed  from  the 
Jewish  people  and  found  its  spiritual  home  within  the  great 
Graeco-Roman  w^orld.  The  historical  basis  for  the  idea  was 
wanting  there.  The  phrase  was  taken  along,  just  as  an 
emigrant  will  carry  a  water-jar  with  him ;  but  the  water  from 
the  well  of  Bethlehem  evaporated  and  it  was  now  used  to 
dip  water  from  the  wells  of  Ephesus  or  from  the  Nile  and 
Tiber.  The  Greek  world  cherished  no  such  national  reli- 
gious hope  as  the  prophets  had  ingrained  in  Jewish  thought ; 
on  the  other  hand  it  was  intensely  interested  in  the  future  life 
for  the  individual,  and  in  the  ascetic  triumph  over  flesh 
and  matter.  Thus  the  idea  which  had  been  the  centre  of 
Christ's  thought  was  not  at  all  the  centre  of  the  Church's 
thought,  and  even  the  comprehension  of  his  meaning 
was  lost  and  overlaid.  Only  some  remnants  of  it  persisted 
in  the  millennial  hope  and  in  the  organic  conception  of  the 
Church, 

The  historical  study  of  our  own  day  has  made  the  first 
thorough  attempt  to  understand  this  fundamental  thought  of 
Jesus  in  the  sense  in  which  he  used  it,  but  the  results  of  this 
investigation  are  not  at  all  completed.  There  are  a  hundred 
critical  difficulties  in  the  way  of  a  sure  and  consistent  inter- 
pretation that  would  be  acceptable  to  all  investigators.  The 
limits  of  space  and  the  purpose  of  this  book  will  not  permit 
me  to  do  justice  to  the  conflicting  views.     I  shall  have  to  set 


s/ 


56  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

down  my  own  results  with  only  an  occasional  reference  to 
the  difficulties  that  beset  them. 

We  saw  in  the  previous  chapter  that  the  hope  of  the  Jewish 
people  underwent  changes  in  the  course  of  its  history/  It 
took  a  wider  and  more  universal  outlook  as  the  political 
horizon  of  the  people  widened.  It  became  more  individual 
in  its  blessings.  It  grew  more  transcendent,  more  purely 
future,  more  apocalyptic  and  detached  from  present  events, 
as  the  people  were  deprived  of  their  political  autonomy  and 
health.  Moreover  it  was  variously  understood  by  the  differ- 
ent classes  and  persons  that  held  it.  Because  this  hope  was 
so  comprehensive  and  all-embracing,  every  man  could 
select  and  emphasize  that  aspect  which  appealed  to  him. 
Some  thought  chiefly  of  the  expulsion  of  the  Roman  power 
with  its  despotic  officials,  its  tax-extorters,  and  its  hated  sym- 
bols. Others  dwelt  on  the  complete  obedience  to  the  Law 
which  would  prevail  when  all  the  apostates  were  cast  out  and 
all  true  Israelites  gathered  to  their  own.  And  some  quiet 
religious  souls  hoped  for  a  great  outflow  of  grace  from  God 
and  a  revival  of  true  piety;  as  the  hynm  of  Zacharias  ex- 
presses it:  "that  we,  being  delivered  out  of  the  hand  of  our 
enemies,  should  serve  him  without  fear,  in  holiness  and  right- 
eousness before  him  all  bur  days."  ^  But  even  in  this  spiritual 
ideal  the  deliverance  from  the  national  enemies  was  a  con- 
dition of  a  holy  life  for  the  nation.  Whatever  aspect  any  man 
emphasized,  it  was  still  a  national  and  collective  idea.  It 
involved  the  restoration  of  Israel  as  a  nation  to  outward 

'  On  the  later  Messianic  hope  of  the  Jewish  people,  see  Shailer  Mathews, 
"The  Messianic  Hope  in  the  New  Testament" ;  Schiirer,  "The  Jewish  People 
in  the  Time  of  Jesus  Christ,"  §  29;  also  §  32,  V. 

^  Luke  I.  74-75. 


THE    SOCIAL    AIMS    OF    JESUS  57 

independence,  security,  and  power,  such  as  it  had  under  the 
Davidic  kings.  It  involved  that  social  justice,  prosperity, 
and  happiness  for  which  the  Law  and  the  prophets  called, 
and  for  which  the  common  people  always  long.  It  involved 
that  religious  purity  and  holiness  of  which  the  nation  had 
always  fallen  short.  And  all  this  was  to  come  in  an  ideal 
degree,  such  as  God  alone  by  direct  intervention  could 
bestow. 

When  Jesus  used  the  phrase  "the  kingdom  of  God,"  it 
inevitably  evoked  that  whole  sphere  of  thought  in  the  minds 
of  his  hearers.  If  he  did  not  mean  by  it  the  substance  of 
what  they  meant  by  it,  it  was  a  mistake  to  use  the  term.  If 
he  did  not  mean  the  consummation  of  the  theocratic  hope, 
but  merely  an  internal  blessedness  for  individuals  with  the 
hope  of  getting  to  heaven,  why  did  he  use  the  words  around 
which  all  the  collective  hopes  clustered  ?  In  that  case  it  was 
not  only  a  misleading  but  a  dangerous  phrase.  It  unfettered 
the  political  hopes  of  the  crowd ;  it  drew  down,  on  him  the 
suspicion  of  the  government ;  it  actually  led  to  his  death. 

Unless  we  have  clear  proof  to  the  contrary,  we  must  assume 
that  in  the  main  the  words  meant  the  same  thing  to  him  and  to 
his  audiences.  But  it  is  very  possible  that  he  seriously  modi- 
fied and  corrected  the  popular  conception.  That  is  in  fact 
the  process  with  every  great,  creative  religious  mind:  the 
connection  with  the  past  is  maintained  and  the  old  terms  are 
used,  but  they  are  set  in  new  connections  and  filled  with 
new  qualities.  In  the  teaching  of  Jesus  we  find  that  he  con- 
sciously opposed  some  features  of  the  popular  hope  and 
sought  to  make  it  truer. 

For  one  thing  he  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  bloodshed 
and  violence.     When  the  crowds  that  were  on  their  way  to 


58  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  Passover  gathered  around  him  in  the  solitude  on  the 
Eastern  shore  of  the  lake  and  wanted  to  make  him  king  and 
march  on  the  capital,  he  eluded  them  by  sending  his  in- 
flammable disciples  away  in  the  boat,  and  himself  going  up 
among  the  rocks  to  pray  till  the  darkness  dispersed  the 
crowd.'  Alliance  with  the  Messianic  force-revolution  was 
one  of  the  temptations  which  he  confronted  at  the  outset  and 
repudiated;^  he  would  not  set  up  God's  kingdom  by  using 
the  devil's  means  of  hatred  and  blood.  With  the  glorious 
idealism  of  faith  and  love  Jesus  threw  away  the  sword  and 
advanced  on  the  intrenchments  of  wrong  with  hand  out- 
stretched and  heart  exposed. 

He  repudiated  not  only  human  violence,  he  even  put 
aside  the  force  which  the  common  hope  expected  from 
heaven.  He  refused  to  summon  the  twelve  legions  of  angels 
either  to  save  his  life  or  to  set  up  the  kingdom  by  slaying  the 
wicked.  John  the  Baptist  had  expected  the  activity  of  the 
Messiah  to  begin  with  the  judgment.  The  fruitless  tree 
would  be  hewn  down ;  the  chaff  would  be  winnowed  out  and 
burned;  and  there  was  barely  time  to  escape  this.^  Jesus 
felt  no  call  to  that  sort  of  Messiahship.  He  reversed  the  pro- 
gramme ;  the  judgment  would  come  at  the  end  and  not  at  the 
beginning.  First  the  blade,'  then  the  ear,  and  then  the  full 
com  in  the  ear,  and  at  the  very  last  the  harvest.  Only  at  the 
end  would  the  tares  be  collected;  only  when  the  net  got  to 
shore  would  the  good  fish  be  separated  from  the  useless 
creatures  of  the  sea.  Thus  the  divine  finale  of  the  judgment 
was  relegated  to  the  distance ;  the  only  task  calling  for  present 
action  was  to  sow  the  seed.* 

•Matthew  14.  22-23;   John  6.  14-15.  'Matthew  3.  10-12. 

'  Matthew  4.  8-10.  *  The  parables  of  Matthew  13 ;  also  Mark  4.  26-29. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS    OF   JESUS  59 

The  popular  hope  was  all  for  a  divine  catastrophe.  The 
kingdom  of  God  was  to  come  by  a  beneficent  earthquake. 
Some  day  it  would  come  like  the  blaze  of  a  meteor,  "with 
outward  obsen' ation, "  and  they  could  say:  "Lo,  there  it 
is!"^  We  have  seen  that  the  prophetic  hope  had  become 
catastrophic  and  apocalyptic  when  the  capacity  for  political 
self-help  was  paralyzed.  When  the  nation  was  pinned  down 
helplessly  by  the  crushing  weight  of  the  oppressors,  it  had  to 
believe  in  a  divine  catastrophe  that  bore  no  causal  relation  to 
human  action.  The  higher  spiritual  insight  of  Jesus  re- 
verted to  the  earlier  and  nobler  prophetic  view  that  the 
future  was  to  grow  out  of  the  present  by  divine  help.  While 
they  were  waiting  for  the  Messianic  cataclysm  that  would 
bring  the  kingdom  of  God  ready-made  from  heaven,  he  saw 
it  growing  up  among  them.  He  took  his  illustrations  of  its 
coming  from  organic  life.  It  was  like  the  seed  scattered  by 
the  peasant,  growing  slowly  and  silently,  night  and  day,  by 
its  own  germinating  force  and  the  food  furnished  by  the 
earth.  The  people  had  the  impatience  of  the  uneducated 
mind  which  does  not  see  processes,  but  clamors  for  results, 
big,  thunderous,  miraculous  results.  Jesus  had  the  scientific 
insight  which  comes  to  most  men  only  by  training,  but  to  the 
elect  few  by  divine  gift.  He  grasped  the  substance  of  that 
law  of  organic  development  in  nature  and  history  which  our 
own  day  at  last  has  begun  to  elaborate  systematically.  His 
parables  of  the  sower,  the  tares,  the  net,  the  mustard-seed,  and 
the  leaven  are  all  polemical  in  character.  He  was  seeking  to 
displace  the  crude  and  misleading  catastrophic  conceptions 
by  a  saner  theory  about  the  coming  of  the  kingdom.  This 
conception  of  growth  demanded  not  only  a  finer  insight,  but  a 

*  Luke  17.  20-21. 


»y  \^ 


6o  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

higher  faith.  It  takes  more  faith  to  see  God  in  the  little  begin- 
nings than  in  the  completed  results;  more  faith  to  say  that 
God  is  now  working  than  to  say  that  he  will  some  day  work. 
Because  Jesus  believed  in  the  organic  growth  of  the  new 
society,  he  patiently  fostered  its  growth,  cell  by  cell.  Every 
human  life  brought  under  control  of  the  new  spirit  which  he 
himself  embodied  and  revealed  was  an  advance  of  the  king- 
dom of  God.  Every  time  the  new  thought  of  the  Father  and 
of  the  right  life  among  men  gained  firmer  hold  of  a  human 
mind  and  brought  it  to  the  point  of  action,  it  meant  progress. 
It  is  just  as  when  human  tissues  have  been  broken  down  by 
disease  or  external  force,  and  new  tissue  is  silently  forming 
under  the  old  and  weaving  a  new  web  of  life.  Jesus  in- 
carnated a  new  type  of  human  life  and  he  was  conscious  of 
that.  By  living  with  men  and  thinking  and  feeling  in  their 
presence,  he  reproduced  his  own  life  in  others  and  they  gained 
faith  to  risk  this  new  way  of  Hving.  This  process  of  as- 
similation went  on  by  the  natural  capacities  inherent  in  the 
social  organism,  just  as  fresh  blood  will  flow  along  the 
estabhshed  arteries  and  capillaries.  When  a  nucleus  of 
like-minded  men  was  gathered  about  him,  the  assimilating 
power  was  greatly  reenforced.  Jesus  joyously  felt  that  the 
most  insignificant  man  in  his  company  who  shared  in  this 
new  social  spirit  was  superior  to  the  grandest  exemplifica- 
tion of  the  old  era,  John  the  Baptist.^  Thus  Jesus  worked  on 
individuals  and  through  individuals,  but  his  real  end  was  not 
individuahstic,  but  social,  and  in  his  method  he  employed 
strong  social  forces.  He  knew  that  a  new  view  of  life  would 
have  to  be  implanted  before  the  new  life  could  be  lived  and 
that  the  new  society  would  have  to  nucleate  around  personal 

*  Matthew  1 1 .  1 1 . 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS    OF   JESUS  6 1 

centres  of  renewal.     But  his  end  was  not  the  new  soul,  but 
the  new  society;  not  man,  but  Man. 

The  popular  hope  was  a  Jewish  national  hope.  Under 
the  hands  of  Jesus  it  became  human  and  therefore  universal. 
John  the  Baptist  had  contradicted  the  idea  that  a  Jew  was 
entitled  to  participation  in  the  good  time  coming  by  virtue  of 
his  national  descent.  Every  time  Jesus  met  a  Gentile,  we 
can  see  the  Jewish  prejudices  melt  away  and  he  gladly 
discovered  the  human  brotherhood  and  spiritual  capacity  in 
the  alien.  "Verily  I  say  unto  you,  I  have  not  found  so  great 
faith,  no,  not  in  Israel,"  and  he  immediately  makes  room  at 
the  Messianic  table-round  for  those  who  shall  come  from  the 
east  and  the  west  to  sit  down  with  the  patriarchs,  while  the 
sons  of  the  kingdom,  the  Jews  who  were  properly  entitled  to 
it,  would  be  cast  out.^  He  reminded  the  indignant  audience 
at  Nazareth  that  the  great  Elijah  had  found  his  refuge  with  a 
heathen  Phoenician  and  Elisha  had  healed  only  a  Syrian 
leper.^  When  one  leper  out  of  ten  thanked  him,  he  took 
pains  to  point  out  that  this  one  was  a  Samaritan  foreigner,' 
and  when  he  wanted  to  hold  up  a  model  of  human  neighborli- 
ness,  he  went  out  of  his  way  to  make  him  a  Samaritan,  an 
alien,  and  a  heretic.'*  Thus  the  old  division  of  humanity 
into  Jews  and  Gentiles  began  to  fade  out  in  his  mind,  and  a 
new  dividing  line  ran  between  the  good  and  the  evil,  between 
those  who  opened  their  heart  to  the  new  life  and  those  who 
closed  it.  He  approached  the  bold  cosmopolitanism  of  Paul, 
that  "in  Christ  Jesus  there  is  neither  Jew  nor  Greek."* 
But  as  soon  as  rehgion  was  thus  based,  not  on  national 

*  Matthew  8.  10-12.  *  Luke  10.  25-37. 

^  Luke  4.  23-30.  '  Galatians  3.  28. 

^  Luke  17.  11-19. 


62  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

prerogatives,  but  on  human  needs  and  capacities,  the  king- 
V  dom  of  God  became  universal  in  scope,  an  affair  of  all  hu- 
y  manity.     This  was  a  modification  of  immense  importance. 
Another  subtle  and  significant  change  in  the   conception 
of  the  kingdom  came  through  the  combination  of  all  these 
changes.      If  the  kingdom  was  not  dependent    on   human 
force  nor  on  divine  catastrophes,  but  could  quietly  grow  by 
organic  processes ;  if  it  was  not  dependent  on  national  recon- 
struction, but  could  work  along  from  man  to  man,  from  group 
to  group,  creating  a  new  life  as  it  went  along ;  then  the  king- 
V    dom  in  one  sense  was  already  here.     Its  consummation,  of 
course,  was  in  the  future,  but  its  fundamental  realities  were 
already  present. 

This  is  the  point  on  which  scholars  are  most  at  odds.  Was 
the  kingdom  in  Christ's  conception  something  eschato- 
logical,  all  in  the  future,  to  be  inaugurated  only  by  a  heavenly 
catastrophe  ?  Or  was  it  a  present  reality  ?  There  is  material 
for  both  views  in  his  sayings.  It  is  important  here  to  remem- 
ber that  the  sayings  of  Jesus  were  handed  down  by  oral 
repetition  among  Christians  for  thirty  or  forty  years  before 
they  were  recorded  in  our  gospels.  But  any  one  can  test  for 
himself  the  fact  that  with  the  best  intentions  of  veracity,  a 
message  or  story  changes  a  little  when  it  passes  from  one 
mind  to  another,  or  even  when  it  is  repeated  often  by  the 
same  man.  Something  of  his  tastes  and  presuppositions 
flows  into  it.  Unless  we  assume  an  absolute  divine  preven- 
tion of  any  such  change,  we  must  allow  that  it  is  wholly  prob- 
^  /  able  that  the  Church  which  told  and  retold  the  sayings  of 
Jesus  insensibly  moulded  them  by  its  own  ideas  and  hopes. 
And  if  that  is  true,  then  no  part  of  the  sayings  of  Christ 
would  be  so  sure  to  be  affected   as  his  sayings  about  his 


THE    SOCIAL   AIMS   OF   JESUS  63 

return  and  the  final  consummation  of  the  kingdom.  That 
was  the  hottest  part  of  the  faith  of  the  primitive  Church  and 
anything  coming  in  contact  with  it  would  run  fluid.  But 
any  modifications  on  this  question  would  all  be  likely  to  be 
in  the  direction  of  the  catastrophic  hope.  That  was  the 
form  of  the  Jewish  hope  before  Christ  touched  it ;  he  cer- 
tainly did  not  succeed  in  weaning  his  disciples  from  it;  it 
was  the  form  most  congenial  to  cruder  minds ;  it  chimed  best 
with  the  fervid  impatience  of  the  earliest  days ;  its  prevalence 
is  attested  by  the  wide  circulation  of  the  Jewish  apocalyptic 
literature  among  Christians.  It  is  thus  exceedingly  probable 
that  the  Church  spilled  a  httle  of  the  lurid  colors  of  its  own 
apocalypticism  over  the  loftier  conceptions  of  its  Master, 
and  when  we  read  his  sayings  to-day,  we  must  allow  for  that 
and  be  on  the  watch  against  it. 

Like  the  old  prophets,  Jesus  beheved  that  God  was  the 
real  creator  of  the  kingdom ;  it  was  not  to  be  set  up  by  man- 
made  evolution.  It  is  one  of  the  axioms  of  religious  faith  to 
believe  that.  He  certainly  believed  in  a  divine  consumma- 
tion at  the  close.  But  the  more  he  believed  in  the  supreme 
value  of  its  spiritual  and  moral  blessings,  and  in  the  power 
of  spiritual  forces  to  mould  human  life,  the  more  would  the 
final  act  of  consummation  recede  in  importance  and  the 
present  facts  and  processes  grow  more  concrete  and  im- 
portant to  his  mind.  It  was  an  act  of  religious  faith  for  John 
the  Baptist  to  assert  that  the  long-desired  kingdom  was 
almost  here.  It  was  a  vastly  higher  act  of  faith  for  Jesus 
to  say  that  it  was  actually  here.  Others  were  scanning  the 
horizon  with  the  telescope  to  see  it  come ;  he  said,  "  It  is 
already  here,  right   in   the   midst   of  you."  ^    Any  one  who 

'  Lxike  17.  21. 


64  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL  CRISIS 

reversed  the  direction  of  his  Hfe  and  became  as  a  child  could 
enter  into  it/  Any  one  who  saw  that  love  to  God  and  man 
was  more  than  the  whole  sacrificial  ritual  was  not  far  from 
the  kingdom,^  The  healing  power  going  out  to  the  demon- 
ized  was  proof  that  a  stronger  one  had  come  upon  the  lord  of 
this  world  and  was  stripping  him  of  his  property,  and  that  the 
kingdom  was  already  come  upon  them.^  Thus  the  future 
tense  was  changing  to  the  present  tense  under  the  power 
of  faith  and  insight  into  spiritual  realities.  In  the  gos- 
pel and  epistle  of  John  we  have  a  confirmation  of  this 
translation  of  the  future  tense  into  the  present.  The  ex- 
pected antichrist  is  already  here ;  the  judgment  is  now  quietly 
going  on;  the  most  important  part  of  the  resurrection  is 
taking  place  now.  The  discourse  about  the  future  coming 
of  the  Lord  in  the  Synoptists  is  replaced  in  John  by  the  dis- 
course about  the  immediate  coming  of  the  Comforter.* 

This,  then,  is  our  interpretation  of  the  situation.  Jesus, 
like  all  the  prophets  and  like  all  his  spiritually  minded 
countrymen,  lived  in  the  hope  of  a  great  transformation  of 
the  national,  social,  and  religious  life  about  him.  He  shared 
the  substance  of  that  hope  with  his  people,  but  by  his  pro- 
founder  insight  and  his  loftier  faith  he  elevated  and  trans- 
formed the  common  hope.  He  rejected  all  violent  means  and 
thereby  transferred  the  inevitable  conflict  from  the  field  of 
battle  to  the  antagonism  of  mind  against  mind,  and  of  heart 
against  lack  of  heart.  He  postponed  the  divine  catastrophe 
of  judgment  to  the  dim  distance  and  put  the  emphasis  on  the 
growth  of  the  new  life  that  was  now  going  on.  He  thought 
less  of  changes  made  en  masse,  and  more  of  the  immediate 

'Matthew  i8.  1-4.  'Matthew  12.  28. 

'Mark  12,  28-34.  *  i  John  2.  18.     John  3.  16-21,  5.  19-29. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS    OF   JESUS  65 

transformation  of  single  centres  of  influence  and  of  social 
nuclei.  The  Jewish  hope  became  a  human  hope  with  uni- 
versal scope.  The  old  intent  gaze  into  the  future  was  turned 
to  faith  in  present  realities  and  beginnings,  and  found  its  task 
here  and  now. 

Luke  says  that  the  boy  Jesus  "advanced  in  wisdom  and 
stature,  and  in  favor  with  God  and  men" ;  that  is,  he  grew  in 
his  intellectual,  physical,  religious,  and  social  capacities.  It 
is  contrary  to  faith  in  the  real  humanity  of  our  Lord  to 
believe  that  he  ever  stopped  growing.  The  story  of  his 
temptation  is  an  account  of  a  forward  leap  in  his  spiritual 
insight  when  he  faced  the  problems  of  his  Messianic  task. 
When  a  growing  and  daring  mind  puts  his  hand  to  a  great 
work,  his  experiences  in  that  work  are  bound  to  enlarge  and 
correct  his  conception  of  the  purpose  and  methods  of  the 
work.  It  is  wholly  in  harmony  with  any  true  conception  of 
the  life  of  Jesus  to  believe  that  his  conception  of  the  king- 
dom became  vaster  and  truer  as  he  worked  for  the  kingdom, 
and  that  he  moved  away  from  the  inherited  conceptions 
along  the  lines  which  our  study  has  suggested. 

But  after  all  this  has  been  said,  it  still  remained  a  social 
hope.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  still  a  collective  conception, 
involving  the  whole  social  life  of  man.  It  is  not  a  matter  of 
saving  human  atoms,  but  of  saving  the  social  organism.  It 
is  not  a  matter  of  getting  individuals  to  heaven,  but  of  trans- 
forming the  life  on  earth  into  the  harmony  of  heaven.  If  he 
put  his  trust  in  spiritual  forces  for  the  founding  of  a  righteous 
society,  it  only  proved  his  sagacity  as  a  society-builder.  If  he 
began  his  work  with  the  smallest  social  nuclei,  it  proved  his 
patience  and  skill.  But  Jesus  never  fell  into  the  fundamental 
heresy  of  later  theology ;  he  never  viewed  the  human  individ- 


66  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

ual  apart  from  human  society ;  he  never  forgot  the  gregarious 
nature  of  man.  His  first  appeal  was  to  his  nation.  When 
they  flocked  about  him  and  followed  him  in  the  early  Gali- 
lean days,  it  looked  as  if  by  the  sheer  power  of  his  spirit  he 
would  swing  the  national  soul  around  to  obey  him,  and  he 
was  happy.  There  must  have  been  at  least  a  possibility  of 
that  in  his  mind,  for  he  counted  it  as  guilt  that  the  people 
failed  to  yield  to  him.  He  did  not  merely  go  through  the 
motions  of  summoning  the  nation  to  fealty,  knowing  all  the 
while  that  such  a  thing  lay  outside  of  his  real  plan.  No  one 
will  understand  the  life  of  Jesus  truly  unless  he  has  asked 
himself  the  question,  What  would  have  happened  if  the 
people  as  a  whole  had  accepted  the  spiritual  leadership  of 
Jesus  ?  The  rejection  of  his  reign  involved  the  political  doom 
of  the  Galilean  cities  and  of  Jerusalem ;  ^  would  the  acceptance 
of  his  reign  have  involved  no  political  consequences?  The 
tone  of  sadness  in  his  later  ministry  was  not  due  simply  to  the 
approach  of  his  personal  death,  but  to  the  consciousness  that 
his  purpose  for  his  nation  had  failed.  He  began  then  to 
draw  his  disciples  more  closely  about  him  and  to  create  the 
nucleus  of  a  new  nation  within  the  old ;  it  was  the  best  thing 
that  remained  for  him  to  do,  but  he  had  hoped  to  do  better. 
He  also  rose  then  to  the  conviction  that  he  would  return  and 
accomplish  in  the  future  what  he  had  hoped  to  accomplish 
during  his  earthly  life.  The  hope  of  the  Coming  and  the 
organization  of  the  Church  together  enshrine  the  social  ele- 
ment of  Christianity;  the  one  postpones  it,  the  other  partly 
realizes  it.  Both  are  the  results  of  a  faith  that  rose  trium- 
phant over  death,  and  laid  the  foundations  of  a  new  common- 
wealth of  God  even  before  the  old  had  been  shaken  to  ruins. 
^  Matthew  ii.  20-24;  Luke  19.  41-44. 


THE  SOCIAL  AIMS  OF  JESUS  67 

All  the  teaching  of   Jesus  and   all  his  thinking  centred  The  king- 
about  the  hope  of  the  kingdom  of  God.     His  moral  teach-  f^S'the^th^ 
ings  get  their  real  meaning  only  when  viewed  from  that  ics  of  Jesus, 
centre.     He  was  not  a  Greek  philosopher  or  Hindu  pundit 
teaching  the  individual  the  way  of  emancipation  from  the 
world  and  its  passions,  but  a  Hebrew  prophet  preparing  men 
for  the  righteous  social  order.     The  goodness  which  he  sought   v 
to  create  in  men  was  always  the  goodness  that  would  enable 
them  to  live  rightly  with  their  fellow-men  and  to  constitute  a 
true  social  life. 

All  human  goodness  must  be  social  goodness.  Man  is 
fundamentally  gregarious  and  his  morality  consists  in  being 
a  good  member  of  his  community.  A  man  is  moral  when 
he  is  social;  he  is  immoral  when  he  is  anti-social.  The 
highest  type  of  goodness  is  that  which  puts  freely  at  the  ser- 
vice of  the  community  all  that  a  man  is  and  can.  The 
highest  type  of  badness  is  that  which  uses  up  the  wealth  and 
happiness  and  virtue  of  the  community  to  please  self.  All 
this  ought  to  go  without  saying,  but  in  fact  religious  ethics 
in  the  past  has  largely  spent  its  force  in  detaching  men  from 
their  community,  from  marriage  and  property,  from  interest 
in  political  and  social  tasks. 

The  fundamental  virtue  in  the  ethics  of  Jesus  was  love, 
because  love  is  the  society-making  quality.  Human  life 
originates  in  love.  It  is  love  that  holds  together  the  basal 
human  organization,  the  family.  The  physical  expression  '^ 
of  all  love  and  friendship  is  the  desire  to  get  together  and 
be  together.  Love  creates  fellowship.  In  the  measure 
in  which  love  increases  in  any  social  organism,  it  will 
hold  together  without  coercion.  If  physical  coercion  is 
constantly  necessary,  it  is  proof  that  the  social  organiza- 


68  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

tion  has  not  evoked  the  power  of  human  affection  and 
fraternity. 

Hence  when  Jesus  prepared  men  for  the  nobler  social 
order  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  he  tried  to  energize  the  faculty 
and  habits  of  love  and  to  stimulate  the  dormant  faculty  of 
devotion  to  the  common  good.  Love  with  Jesus  was  not  a 
flickering  and  wayward  emotion,  but  the  highest  and  most 
steadfast  energy  of  a  will  bent  on  creating  fellowship. 

The  force  of  that  unitive  will  is  best  seen  where  fellowship 
is  in  danger  of  disruption.  If  a  man  has  offended  us,  that 
fact  is  not  to  break  up  our  fraternity,  but  we  must  forgive  and 
forgive  and  forgive,  and  always  stand  ready  to  repair  the 
torn  tissues  of  fellowship.^  If  we  remember  that  we  have 
offended  and  our  brother  is  now  alienated  from  us,  we  are  to 
drop  everything,  though  it  be  the  sacrifice  we  are  just  offering 
in  the  temple,  and  go  and  re-create  fellowship.^  If  a  man 
hates  us  or  persecutes  and  reviles  us,  we  must  refuse  to  let 
fraternity  be  ruined,  and  must  woo  him  back  with  love  and 
blessings.'  If  he  smites  us  in  the  face,  we  must  turn  the 
other  cheek  instead  of  doubling  the  barrier  by  returning  the 
blow.*  These  are  not  hard  and  fast  laws  or  detached  rules 
of  conduct.  If  they  are  used  as  such,  they  become  unwork- 
able and  ridiculous.  They  are  simply  the  most  emphatic 
expressions  of  the  determination  that  the  fraternal  relation 
which  binds  nien  together  must  not  be  ruptured.  If  a  child 
can  be  saved  from  its  unsocial  self-will  only  by  spanking  it, 
parental  love  will  have  to  apply  that  medicine.  If  a  rough 
young  fellow  will  be  a  happier  member  of  society  for  being 
knocked  down,  we  must  knock  him  down  and  then  sit  down 

*  Matthew  i8.  21-22.  '  Matthew  5.  43-48. 

'  Matthew  5.  23-24.  *  Matthew  5.  38-42. 


THE    SOCIAL   AIMS    OF   JESUS  69 

beside  him  and  make  a  social  man  of  him.  The  law  of  love 
transcends  all  other  laws.  It  does  not  stop  where  they  stop, 
and  occasionally  it  may  cut  right  across  their  beaten  tracks. 
When  Mary  of  Bethany  broke  the  alabaster  jar  of  ointment, 
the  disciples  voiced  the  ordinary  law  of  conduct:  it  was 
wasteful  luxury ;  the  money  might  have  fed  the  poor.  Jesus 
took  her  side.  While  the  disciples  were  thinking  of  the 
positions  they  were  to  get  when  their  master  became  king, 
her  feminine  intuition  had  seen  the  storm-cloud  lowering  over 
his  head  and  had  heard  the  mute  cry  for  sympathy  in  his  soul, 
and  had  given  him  the  best  she  had  in  the  abandonment  of 
love.  "This  is  a  beautiful  deed  that  she  has  done."  The 
instinct  of  love  had  been  a  truer  guide  of  conduct  than  aU 
machine-made  rules  of  charity.^ 

Jesus  was  very  sociable.  He  was  always  falling  into  con- 
versation with  people,  sometimes  in  calm  disregard  of  the 
laws  of  propriety.  When  his  disciples  returned  to  him  at  the 
well  of  Samaria,  they  were  surprised  to  find  him  talking  with 
a  woman  !  ^  Society  had  agreed  to  ostracize  certain  classes, 
for  instance  the  tax-collectors.  Jesus  refused  to  recognize 
such  a  partial  negation  of  human  society.  He  accepted  their 
invitations  to  dinner  and  invited  himself  to  their  houses, 
thereby  incurring  the  sneer  of  the  respectable  as  a  friend  of 
publicans  and  a  glutton  and  wine-drinker.^  He  w^anted  men 
to  Uve  as  neighbors  and  brothers  and  he  set  the  example. 
Social  meals  are  often  referred  to  in  the  gospels  and  fur- 
nished him  the  illustrations  for  much  of  his  teaching,*  His 
meals  with  his  disciples  had  been  so  important  a  matter  in 
their  life  that  they  continued  them  after  his  death.    His 

'Mark  14.  3-9.  'Matthew  11.  19. 

John  4.  27.  *  Luke  14. 


70  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

manner  in  breaking  the  bread  for  them  all  had  been  so  char- 
acteristic that  they  recognized  him  by  it  after  his  resurrection/ 
One  of  the  two  great  ritual  acts  in  the  Church  grew  out  of 
his  last  social  meal  with  his  friends.  If  we  have  ever  felt 
how  it  brings  men  together  to  put  their  feet  under  the  same 
table,  we  shall  realize  that  in  these  elements  of  Christ's  life  a 
new  communal  sociability  was  working  its  way  and  creating 
a  happy  human  society,  and  Jesus  refused  to  surrender  so 
great  an  attainment  to  the  ordinary  laws  of  fasting.^ 

Pride  disrupts  society.  Love  equalizes.  Humility  freely 
takes  its  place  as  a  simpTe  member  of  the  community.  When 
Jesus  found  the  disciples  disputing  about  their  rank  in  the 
kingdom,  he  rebuked  their  divisive  spirit  of  pride  by  setting  a 
little  child  among  them  as  their  model ;  ^  for  an  unspoiled 
child  is  the  most  social  creature,  swift  to  make  friends,  happy 
in  play  with  others,  lonely  without  human  love.  When  Jesus 
overheard  the  disciples  quarrelling  about  the  chief  places  at 
the  last  meal,  he  gave  them  a  striking  object  lesson  in  the 
subordination  of  self  to  the  service  of  the  community,  by 
washing  their  dusty  sandalled  feet.* 

All  these  acts  and  sayings  receive  their  real  meaning  when 
we  think  of  them  in  connection  with  the  kingdom  of  God, 
the  ideal  human  society  to  be  established.  Instead  of  a 
society  resting  on  coercion,  exploitation,  and  inequality,  Jesus 
desired  to  found  a  society  resting  on  love,  service,  and  equality. 
These  new  principles  were  so  much  the  essence  of  his  char- 
acter and  of  his  view  of  life,  that  he  lived  them  out  spon- 
taneously and  taught  them  in  everything  that  he  touched  in 
his  conversations  or  public  addresses.     God  is  a  father ;  men 

'  Luke  24.  30-31.  '  Mark  9.  33-37. 

*  Mark  2.  18-19.  *  Luke  22.  24-30;  John  13.  1-20. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS   OF   JESUS  7I 

are  neighbors  and  brothers;  let  them  act  accordingly.  Let 
them  love,  and  then  life  will  be  true  and  good.  Let  them 
seek  the  kingdom,  and  all  things  would  follow.  Under  no 
circumstance  let  them  suffer  fellowship  to  be  permanently 
disrupted.  If  an  individual  or  a  class  was  outside  of  fraternal 
relations,  he  set  himself  to  heal  the  breach.  The  kingdom 
of  God  is  the  true  human  society ;  the  ethics  of  Jesus  taught 
the  true  social  conduct  which  would  create  the  true  society. 
This  would  be  Christ's  test  for  any  custom,  law,  or  institution : 
does  it  draw  men  together  or  divide  them  ? 

In  our  study  of  the  Old  Testament  propTiets,  we  saw  that  Insistence 
indifference  or  hostility  to  ritual  religion  was  a  characteristic  and  indiflfer- 
of  prophetic  religion,  and  that  this  turned  the  full  power  of  epce  to 
the  religious  impulse  into  the  sluice  of  ethical  conduct.    Jesus 
was  a  successor  of  the  prophets  in  this  regard. 

He  used  the  temple  as  a  place  to  meet  men.  He  valued 
the  temple  as  a  house  of  prayer  and  fiercely  resented  the 
intrusion  of  the  money-making  spirit  within  it.^  But  other- 
wise it  was  of  no  religious  importance  to  him.  According  to 
the  Gospel  of  John  he  foretold  a  stage  of  religion  in  which 
the  old  burning  issue  of  the  true  place  of  worship  would  be 
antiquated  and  dead.^  Stephen,  who  understood  Jesus  better 
than  most  of  the  apostles,  had  scant  reverence  for  the  temple.' 
The  temple  sacrifices  are  mentioned  by  Jesus  only  to  say 
that  the  duty  of  fraternal  reconciliation  takes  precedence  of 
the  duty  of  proceeding  with  sacrificial  ritual.* 

Since  the  Exile  and  the  dispersion  of  the  people,  the  minor 
and  personal  acts  of  ritual  had  really  become  of  greater 

'Mark  11.  15-19.  'Acts  6.  14,  7.  44-50. 

'  John  4.  19-24.  *  Matthew  5.  23-24. 


72  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

practical  importance  in  the  life  of  the  Jews  than  the  temple 
sacrifices.  About  some  of  these  minor  ritual  acts  Jesus  was 
in  perpetual  collision  with  the  guardians  of  customary  piety. 
They  did  violence  to  human  needs  to  keep  the  Sabbath  in- 
tact. They  wanted  men  to  look  solemn  and  fast  in  contrition 
even  when  they  were  happy  in  God.  They  concentrated 
attention  on  the  things  that  a  man  must  not  touch  and  eat 
for  fear  of  ceremonial  defilement,  and  thereby  made  men  in- 
different to  moral  defilement.  Jesus  on  the  other  hand  held 
that  the  Sabbath  was  made  to  serve  man,  not  to  break  him; 
that  a  man  should  fast  only  when  fasting  was  the  fit  outward 
expression  of  his  inward  state  of  mind ;  and  that  no  outward 
contact  with  tabooed  things  would  make  any  difference  in 
the  moral  status  of  a  man,  for  that  is  determined  only  by 
the  good  or  evil  thoughts  and  impulses  which  proceed 
from  his  own  soul.  In  his  indifference  to  the  law  of 
clean  and  unclean  food  he  not  only  brushed  aside  the 
traditions  of  the  elders,  but  contradicted  the  sacred  Law 
itself.' 

These  religious  duties  were  supposed  to  serve  God.  Jesus 
was  indifferent  to  them  when  they  did  not  serve  men,  and 
hostile  to  them  when  they  harmed  men.  He  ridiculed  the 
models  of  piety  who  were  so  punctilious  about  ritual  ob- 
servances and  so  indifferent  to  wrong  moral  relations.  They 
faithfully  gave  a  tithe  of  everything  to  TelTgion,  down  to  the 
mint,  anise,  and  cummin  in  their  garden-beds,  but  such  little 
things  as  justice  and  mercy  and  good  faith,  the  quahties 
on  which  human  society  rests  and  which  constitute  the  real 

»  On  the  Sabbath:  Matthew  12.  1-14;  Luke  13.  10-17.  On  fasting: 
Mark  2.  18-22.  On  tabooed  food  and  ceremonial  lustrations:  Mark  7. 
1-23;  Matthew  15.  1-20. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS    OF   JESUS  73 

burden  of  the  Law,  they  quite  overlooked.^  When  he  saw  a 
Pharisee  straining  the  milk  lest  haply  he  should  swallow  a 
drowned  gnat  and  so  transgress  the  Law  in  eating  a  strangled 
beast,  he  saw  there  a  type  of  what  these  religious  men  were 
doing  all  the  time :  straining  out  gnats  and  swallowing  camels.^ 
They  wiped  the  outside  of  the  platter,  but  within  it  was 
"filled  with  extortion  and  excess";  their  food  was  acquired 
by  injustice  and  consumed  in  luxury.^  Thus  religion,  which 
ought  to  be  the  source  of  morality,  drugged  and  blinded  the 
moral  judgment,  so  that  the  very  teachers  of  religion  locked 
the  door  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in  men's  faces.*  They  even 
nullified  the  fundamental  obligation  of  the  child  to  the  parent 
by  teaching  that  if  a  man  gave  money  to  the  temple,  and  thus 
supported  the  ritual  worship  of  God,  he  was  free  from  the 
duty  of  supporting  his  parents.^  Thus  religion  had  become 
a  parasite  on  the  body  of  morality  and  was  draining  it  instead 
of  feeding  it. 

This  revolutionary  attitude  to  inherited  religion,  which  so 
jarred  the  earnest  and  painstaking  representatives  of  tradi- 
tional piety,  is  explained  by  Christ's  conception  of  the  king- 
dom of  God.  They  thought  it  was  a  Jewish  affair  and  would 
rest  on  careful  religious  observances.  He  thought  it  was  a  \^ 
human  affair  and  would  rest  on  right  human  relations.  He 
would  tolerate  nothing  that  hallowed  wrong,  not  even  religion. 
He  had  no  patience  with  religious  thought  which  hampered 
the  attainment  of  a  right  social  life.  To  them  the  written 
Law  inherited  from  the  past  was  the  supreme  thing ;  to  Jesus 
the  better  human  life  to  be  established  in  the  future  was  the 
supreme  thing. 

*  Matthew  23.  23.  *  Matthew  23.  13. 

'  Matthew  23.  24.  *  Mark  7.  1-13. 

^  Matthew  23.  25-26. 


74  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL    CRISIS 

Like  all  the  greatest  spiritual  teachers  of  mankind,  Jesus 
realized  a  profound  danger  to  the  better  self  in  the  pursuit  of 
wealth.  Whoever  will  watch  the  development  of  a  soul  that 
has  bent  its  energies  to  the  task  of  becoming  rich,  can  see 
how  perilous  the  process  is  to  the  finer  sense  of  justice,  to 
the  instinct  of  mercy  and  kindness  and  equality,  and  to  the 
singleness  of  devotion  to  higher  ends;  in  short,  to  all  the 
higher  humanity  in  us.  It  is  a  simple  fact:  "Ye  cannot 
serve  God  and  mammon;"  each  requires  the  best  of  a  man. 
''The  cares  of  this  life  and  the  deceitfulness  of  riches" — • 
note  that  quality  of  deceitfulness  —  will  choke  the  good  seed 
like  rank  weeds  which  appropriate  soil  and  sunshine  for  their 
own  growth.^  When  a  man  lays  up  treasure,  his  heart  almost 
inevitably  is  with  his  treasure.  Then  gradually  the  inner 
light  in  him  is  darkened ;  the  eye  of  his  conscience  is  filmed 
and  blurred.^  Wealth  is  apt  to  grow  stronger  than  the  man 
who  owns  it.  It  owns  him  and  he  loses  his  moral  and 
spiritual  freedom.  The  spirit  of  the  world  is  always  delud- 
ing men  into  thinking  that  "a  man's  life  consisteth  in  the 
abundance  of  things  that  he  possesseth,"  ^  but  when  he  builds 
his  life  on  that  theory,  he  is  lost  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 
And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  he  does  not  know  it.  The  harlot 
and  the  drunkard  have  their  hours  of  remorse  and  self- 
abasement;  the  covetous  man  does  not  even  know  that  he 
is  on  the  downward  way.  Saint  Francis  Xavier,  the  noble 
Jesuit  missionary,  said  that  in  the  confessional  men  had 
confessed  to  him  all  sins  that  he  knew  and  some  that  he  had 
never  imagined,  but  none  had  ever  of  his  own  accord  con- 
fessed that  he  was  covetous. 

But  Jesus  did  not  fear  riches  merely  as  a  narcotic  soul- 

*  Matthew  13.  22.  '  Matthew  6.  19-34.  '  Luke  12.  15. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS    OF   JESUS  75 

poison.  In  his  desire  to  create  a  true  human  society  he  en- 
countered riches  as  a  prime  divisive  force  in  actual  hfe.  It 
wedges  society  apart  in  horizontal  strata  between  which  real 
fellow-feeling  is  paralyzed.  It  lifts  individuals  out  of  the 
wholesome  dependence  on  their  fellows  and  equally  out  of 
the  full  sense  of  responsibility  to  them.  That  is  the  charm 
of  riches  and  their  curse. 

This  is  the  key  to  the  conversation  of  Jesus  with  the  rich 
young  man,  who  was  so  honestly  and  lovably  anxious  to  have 
a  share  in  the  Messianic  salvation.^  He  could  truthfully  say 
that  he  had  lived  a  good  life.  Jesus  accepted  his  statement, 
but  if  he  would  be  perfect,  he  bade  him  get  rid  of  his  wealth 
and  join  the  company  of  the  disciples.  This  demand  has 
been  understood  either  as  a  test  or  as  a  cure.  Some  think 
that  it  was  merely  a  test ;  if  he  had  consented  to  give  up  his 
wealth,  it  would  not  have  been  necessary  to  give  it  up.  Some 
think  it  was  a  cure  for  the  love  of  money  which  was  really 
needed  in  this  exceptional  case.  On  either  supposition  the 
advice  concerned  merely  this  young  man's  soul;  it  was 
medicine  to  be  swallowed  by  him  for  his  own  good  alone. 
But  Jesus  immediately  rises  from  this  concrete  case  to  the 
general  assertion  that  it  is  hard  for  any  rich  man  to  enter 
the  kingdom  of  God,  harder  than  for  a  camel  to  wedge 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle.  The  young  man  who  was  de- 
parting with  clouded  face  was  simply  a  demonstration  of  a 
general  fact.  Clearly  here  was  a  case  where  the  heart  was 
anchored  to  its  treasure. 

The  solution  for  this  "hard  saying"  has  been  sought  in 
the  remark  quoted  only  in  Mark :  ^  "  How  hard  it  is  for  them 
that  trust  in  riches  to  enter  the  kingdom."    A  man  may  have 

'Mark  lo.  17-31.  ^  Mark  10.  24.       ^ 


76  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

riches  safely,  if  only  he  will  not  trust  in  them  for  salvation. 
It  is  easy  to  satisfy  that  requirement.  But  unfortunately  the 
best  manuscripts  do  not  contain  the  phrase  about  trusting. 
The  critical  editions  of  the  Greek  text  drop  it  or  place  it  in 
the  margin.  Some  early  copyist  probably  felt  as  anxious  to 
dull  the  sharpness  of  the  saying  as  some  modern  preachers. 

The  solution  lies  in  another  direction.  We  think  of  the 
salvation  of  the  individual  in  the  life  to  come,  and  find  it  hard 
that  so  fine  a  young  fellow  should  be  barred  out  of  heaven 
because  he  was  rich.  Jesus  was  thinking  of  the  righteous 
society  on  earth  which  he  was  initiating  and  of  the  young 
man's  fitness  for  that.  Suppose  the  young  man  had  kept  his 
property  and  had  thus  joined  the  discipleship.  How  would 
that  have  affected  the  spirit  of  the  group?  Would  not  the 
others  have  felt  jealously  that  he  was  in  a  class  by  himself? 
If  Jesus  had  shown  him  favor,  would  not  even  the  Master's 
motives  have  been  suspected?  If  he  had  replenished  the 
common  purse  from  his  private  wealth,  it  would  have  given 
them  all  a  more  opulent  living;  it  would  have  attracted 
selfish  men  and  would  have  paralyzed  the  influence  of  Jesus 
on  the  poor.  Then  the  crowds  would  have  been  at  his  heels, 
not  merely  for  healing,  but  for  the  loaves  and  fishes  —  with 
dessert  added.  Judas  would  have  been  deeply  pleased  with 
such  a  reenforcement  of  the  apostolate,  but  Jesus  would  have 
gone  through  the  same  sorrow  which  came  upon  Francis  of 
Assisi  when  property  was  forced  upon  his  Order  and  its  early 
spirit  was  corrupted.  It  is  all  very  well  to  say  that  rich  and 
poor  are  alike  in  Christ,  but  in  fact  only  exceptional  char- 
acters, like  Jesus  himself,  can  sit  at  a  rich  man's  table  and  be 
indifferent  to  the  fact  that  he  is  rich.  Others  can  forget  it 
for  a  while  under  the  pressure  of  a  great  common  danger  or 


THE    SOCIAL    AIMS    OF    JESUS  77 

sorrow  or  joy,  but  in  general  the  sense  of  equality  will  prevail 
only  where  substantial  equality  exists.  The  presence  of  the 
rich  young  man  would  have  been  ruinous  to  the  spirit  of  the 
discipleship  and  would  have  put  a  debased  interpretation  on 
the  hope  of  the  kingdom.  Jesus  did  not  ask  him  to  hand 
over  his  property  for  the  common  purse,  as  the  Church  in 
later  times  did  constantly,  but  simply  to  turn  it  back  to  social  / 
usefulness  and  come  down  to  the  common  level. 

The  meeting  of  Jesus  and  the  rich  young  man  has  often 
been  painted,  but  always  as  a  private  aflFair  between  the  man 
and  Jesus.  At  the  St.  Louis  Exposition  there  was  a  painting 
representing  Jesus  sitting  in  a  barnlike  building  with  a  group 
of  plain  people  about  him,  women,  old  men,  and  the  disciples. 
Before  him  stands  the  young  man  richly  dressed,  a  bird  of 
very  different  feather.  Jesus  by  his  gesture  is  evidently 
drawing  in  the  listening  group.  It  was  not  a  matter  between 
the  man  and  God,  but  between  the  man  and  God  and  the 
people.  The  theological  interpretations  of  the  passage,  like 
the  artistic,  have  failed  to  take  account  of  this  third  factor  in 
the  moral  situation.  If  the  kingdom  of  God  is  the  true 
human  society,  it  is  a  fellowship  of  justice,  equality,  and  love. 
But  it  is  hard  to  get  riches  with  justice,  to  keep  them  with 
equality,  and  to  spend  them  with  love.  The  kingdom  of 
God  means  normal  and  wholesome  human  relations,  and  it 
is  exceedingly  hard  for  a  rich  man  to  be  in  normal  human 
relations  to  others,  as  many  a  man  has  discovered  who  has 
honestly  tried.  It  can  be  done  only  by  an  act  of  renuncia- 
tion in  some  form. 

It  gives  a  touch  of  cheerful  enjoyment  to  exegetical  studies 
to  watch  the  athletic  exercises  of  interpreters  when  they  con- 
front these  sayings  of  Jesus  about  wealth.    They  find  it 


78  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

almost  as  hard  to  get  around  the  needle's  eye  as  the  camel 
would  find  it  to  get  through.  The  resources  of  philology 
have  been  ransacked  to  turn  the  "camel"  into  an  anchor- 
rope,  and  Oriental  antiquarian  lore  has  been  summoned  to 
prove  that  the  "needle's  eye"  was  a  little  rear-gate  of  the 
Oriental  house  through  which  the  camel,  by  judiciously  going 
down  on  its  knees,  could  work  its  way.  There  is  a  manifest 
solicitude  to  help  the  rich  man  through.  There  has  not 
been  a  like  fraternal  anxiety  for  the  Pharisee;  he  is  allowed 
to  swallow  his  camel  whole.^  In  the  case  of  the  parable  of 
the  unjust  steward  ^  there  are  something  like  thirty-six  dif- 
ferent interpretations  on  record.  They  differ  so  widely  in 
their  allegorical  explanations  that  we  are  left  in  doubt  if  the 
lord  of  the  steward  is  God  or  the  devil.  Yet  the  parable 
seems  simple  if  one  is  not  afraid  of  breaking  crockery  by 
handling  it  as  Jesus  did. 

A  rich  man  had  farmed  out  his  lands  to  various  tenants  on 
shares.  A  steward  managed  the  whole  and  collected  the 
rents.  His  master  became  suspicious  of  him  and  gave  him 
notice  of  dismissal.  It  would  take  effect  as  soon  as  his 
accounts  were  made  up.  The  steward  confronted  a  painful 
situation.  He  looked  at  his  white  hands  and  concluded  that 
manual  labor  was  not  in  his  line.  His  social  pride  would  not 
permit  him  to  beg.  So  he  concluded,  as  others  have  done, 
to  "graft."  He  used  the  brief  term  of  authority  still  left 
him  to  get  on  the  right  side  of  the  tenant  farmers  by  reducing 
on  paper  the  amount  of  their  harvests  and  consequently  of 
the  shares  due  to  the  proprietor.  He  could  hope  to  enjoy 
their  comfortable  hospitality  for  some  time  in  return  for  the 
substantial  present  he  made  them  out  of  his  master's  pocket. 
*  Matthew  23.  24.  'Luke  16.  1-9. 


THE  SOCIAL  AIMS  OF  JESUS  79 

In  fact  they  would  have  to  "stand  in"  with  their  confederate 
to  keep  him  silent.  When  his  master  learned  of  it,  he  could 
not  help  admiring  the  cleverness  of  the  rascal,  even  though 
it  was  at  his  expense. 

Jesus  too  admired  the  shrewdness  and  foresight  which  the 
men  of  the  present  social  order  exhibit  within  their  plane  of 
life.  If  only  the  children  of  light  would  be  as  wise  in  theirs  I 
His  application  is  that  the  men  who  hold  the  dishonest  money 
of  the  present  era  will  do  well  to  use  the  brief  term  of  power 
left  to  them  before  the  Messianic  era  begins.  Let  them  do 
kindness  to  the  children  of  the  kingdom,  and  they  may  hope 
by  their  gratitude  to  get  some  sort  of  borrowed  shelter  when 
the  situation  is  reversed  and  the  pious  poor  are  on  top.^ 

The  story  shows  a  very  keen  insight  into  the  contemporary 
methods  of  grafting  and  into  the  state  of  mind  of  the  grafter. 
No  one  could  have  told  the  story  who  had  not  thought  in- 
cisively about  social  conditions.  Interpreters  have  found  it 
necessary  to  defend  Jesus  because  he  holds  up  an  immoral 
transaction  for  admiration  and  imitation.  Probably  Jesus 
never  imagined  that  a  teacher  of  his  well-known  bent  of  mind 
would  be  supposed  to  approve  of  financial  trickery.  It  is 
precisely  because  he  was  so  completely  outside  of  and  above 
this  whole  realm  of  dealing  that  he  could  play  with  the 
material  as  he  did,  just  as  a  confirmed  socialist  might  use  the 
watering  of  stock  or  the  "promotion"  of  a  mining  company 
as  an  illustration  of  the  beauties  of  socialism.  It  is  hard  to 
imagine  Jesus  without  a  smile  of  sovereign  humor  in  advising 
these  great  men  to  get  a  plank  ready  for  the  coming 
deluge. 

*  The  parable  stops  with  v.  9.  What  follows  seems  to  consist  of  kindred 
sayings  of  Jesus  which  the  editor  has  grouped  here. 


8o  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  parable  of  the  steward  has  often  been  so  allegorized 
and  spiritualized  that  the  application  to  the  rich  has  almost 
evaporated.  His  contemporary  hearers  saw  the  point.  "  The 
Pharisees,  who  were  lovers  of  money,  heard  all  these  things 
and  they  scoffed  at  him."  The  Greek  verb  means  liter- 
ally: "they  turned  up  their  nose  at  him."  ^  Jesus  repHed 
to  their  scoff  by  telling  the  story  of  Dives  and  Lazarus.^ 
It  was  not  intended  to  give  information  about  the  future  life. 
Its  sting  is  in  the  reference  to  the  five  brothers  of  Dives, 
who  were  living  as  he  had  lived  and  were  in  imminent 
peril  of  faring  as  he  fared.  They  were  the  men  who  re- 
fused to  do  what  the  parable  of  the  steward  advised  them 
to  do. 

There  is  a  notable  difference  between  our  gospels  in  re- 
gard to  the  amount  of  teaching  on  wealth  which  they  report, 
and  in  regard  to  the  sharpness  of  edge  which  it  bears.  The 
Gospel  of  John  is  at  one  extreme;  we  should  hardly  know 
that  Jesus  had  any  interest  in  questions  of  property  if  we 
had  only  the  fourth  gospel.  There  the  centre  of  his  teach- 
ing is  not  the  kingdom  of  God,  but  the  eternal  life;  his  in- 
terests are  religious  and  theological.  The  divine  figure  of 
the  Son  of  God  moves  through  the  doubts  and  discussions 
of  men  like  the  silver  moon  sailing  serene  through  the  clouds. 
Luke  is  at  the  other  extreme.  He  alone  reports  the  parables 
of  the  rich  fool,  the  unjust  steward,  and  Dives  and  Lazarus. 
He  also  gives  a  sharper  social  turn  to  sayings  reported  by 
the  other  gospels.  For  instance,  in  the  beatitudes  of  Matthew, 
Jesus  blesses  the  poor  in  spirit,  those  who  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness,  the  meek  and  the  pure  in  heart.  In  Luke 
he  cheers  the  socially  poor,  the  physically  hungry,  and  puts 

*  Luke  1 6.  14.  ^  Luke  16,  19-31. 


THE    SOCIAL    AIMS    OF    JESUS  8l 

his  meaning  beyond  question  by  following  up  his  blessings 
on  the  poor  with  corresponding  woes  to  the  rich,  the  satiated, 
and  the  frivolous.^ 

Many  critics  doubt  that  Jesus  taught  as  Luke  reports  him. 
They  think  that  Luke  drew  this  class  of  material  from  a 
Jewish-Christian  source  which  was  tainted  with  Ebionitic 
tendencies.  I  fail  to  be  convinced  by  their  arguments.  The 
other  evangelists  report  so  much  of  a  similar  nature  that  the 
sections  reported  by  Luke  alone  seem  quite  in  keeping  with 
the  mind  of  Jesus.  The  material  in  question  seems  to  bear 
the  literary  and  artistic  coinage  of  Christ's  intellect  as  much 
as  any  other  material  in  the  gospels.  The  "Ebionitic  sec- 
tions" run  all  through  the  narrative  of  Luke,  so  that  they 
were  not  drawn  from  some  brief  document  covering  a  small 
portion  of  Christ's  life.  The  critical  suspicions  seem  to  rest 
on  a  moral  dislike  for  the  radical  attitude  toward  wealth 
taken  by  Jesus  according  to  Luke,  rather  than  on  sound 
critical  principles.  But  if  it  is  a  question  of  moral  insight, 
we  may  fairly  doubt  who  saw  more  truly,  Jesus  or  the  modem 
middle-class  critics. 

An  ascetic  distrust  of  property  and  the  property  instinct 
very  early  affected  the  Christian  Church  after  its  transition 
to  the  Greek  world,  and  it  is  important  to  be  on  the  watch 
against  any  influence  of  this  alien  tendency  on  those  who 
reported  the  sayings  of  Christ.  But  the  radical  teachings  of 
Jesus  are  not  ascetic,  but  revolutionary,  and  that  distinction 
is  fundamental.  What  is  called  Ebionitic  is  simply  the  strong 
democratic  and  social  feeling  which  pervaded  later  Judaism. 
The  probability  is  rather  that  the  later  reporters  softened 
this  social  radicalism  and  spiritualized  his  thought,  than  that 

*  Compare  Matthew  5.  1-12  with  Luke  6.  20-26. 
G 


82  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

some  Ebionitic  followers  of  Jesus  imported  their  social  un- 
rest into  his  spiritual  teaching. 

In  any  case,  Luke  put  his  indorsement  on  this  conception 
of  Christ's  thought.  He  was  the  only  writer  in  the  New 
Testament,  so  far  as  we  know,  who  was  of  Greek  descent 
and  character.  He  had  a  singular  affinity  for  all  that  was 
humane,  generous,  heroic,  and  humanly  stirring  and  touch- 
ing, and  he  tells  his  stories  with  a  distinct  artistic  note.  Men 
like  Stephen,  Barnabas,  and  Paul  were  his  heroes.  To  him 
alone  we  owe  the  parable  of  the  good  Samaritan,  of  the 
prodigal  son,  of  the  Pharisee  and  publican,  and  the  story  of 
the  great  sinner  and  the  penitent  thief.  The  socialist  among 
the  evangelists  was  also  the  one  who  has  given  us  the  richest 
expressions  of  the  free  grace  of  God  to  sinful  men,  without 
which  our  evangel  would  be  immeasurably  poorer.  If  he 
was  tainted  with  Ebionitic  and  Jewish  spirit  in  reporting  the 
teachings  on  wealth,  how  did  he  escape  being  tainted  with 
the  legal  and  narrow  spirit  of  Jewish  Christianity  which  must 
have  saturated  his  supposed  Ebionitic  sources  ? 

The  social  As  with  the  Old  Testament  prophets,  the  fundamental  sym- 
fesus^^^  °^  pathies  of  Jesus  were  with  the  poor  and  oppressed.  In  the 
glad  opening  days  of  his  preaching  in  Galilee,  when  he  wanted 
to  unfold  his  programme,  he  turned  to  the  passage  of  Isaiah 
where  the  prophet  proclaimed  good  tidings  to  the  poor,  re- 
lease to  the  captives,  liberty  to  the  bruised,  and  the  accept- 
able year  of  the  Lord  for  all.  Now,  said  Jesus,  that  is  to  be 
fulfilled.^  To  John  in  prison  he  offered  as  proof  that  the 
Messiah  had  really  come,  that  the  helpless  were  receiving 
help,  and  the  poor  were  listening  to  glad  news.^    The  Church 

^  Luke  4.  16-22.  ^  Matthew  11.  2-5. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS   OF   JESUS  83 

has  used  the  miracles  of  Jesus  for  theological  purposes  as 
evidences  of  his  divine  mission.  According  to  the  Synoptic 
gospels,  Jesus  himself  flatly  refused  to  furnish  them  for  such 
a  purpose  to  the  contemporary  theologians.^  His  healing 
power  was  for  social  help,  for  the  alleviation  of  human  suffer- 
ing. It  was  at  the  service  of  any  wretched  leper,  but  not  of 
the  doubting  scribes.  To  get  the  setting  of  his  life  we  must 
remember  the  vast  poverty  and  misery  of  Oriental  countries. 
It  threatened  to  ingulf  him  entirely  and  to  turn  him  into  a 
travelling  medical  dispensary. 

It  is  often  possible  nowadays  to  detect  the  social  studies 
and  sympathies  of  a  public  speaker  by  an  unpurposed  phrase 
or  allusion  which  shows  where  his  mind  has  been  dwelling. 
This  is  constantly  true  of  Jesus.  If  he  had  not  known  how 
much  a  strayed  sheep  or  a  lost  coin  meant  to  the  poor,  he 
would  not  have  told  the  anecdotes  about  their  joy  in  re- 
covering them.^  If  he  had  not  appreciated  the  heroic  gener- 
osity of  the  poor,  he  would  not  have  breathed  more  quickly 
when  he  saw  the  widow  dropping  her  two  mites  in  the  temple 
treasury.'  He  knew  how  large  a  share  the  lawyers  get  in 
settling  an  estate  and  how  little  is  left  for  the  widow.*  He 
knew  how  bitterly  hard  it  is  for  the  poor  to  set  the  judicial 
machinery  of  organized  society  in  motion  in  their  favor; 
hence  he  used  the  illustration  of  the  widow  and  the  judge.® 
He  knew  the  golden  rule  of  "society" :  dine  those  by  whom 
you  want  to  be  dined.  Those  who  most  need  a  dinner  are 
never  asked  to  have  a  dinner.  He  suggested  to  his  hosts  a 
reversal  of  this  policy,*  and  he  loved  to  think  of  the  Messianic 

*  Matthew  12.  38-39,  16.  1-4.  *  Mark  12.  40. 
'  Luke  15.  i-io.  '  Luke  18.  1-8. 

*  Mark  12.  41—44.  '  Luke  14.  12—14. 


84  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

salvation  as  an  actual  reversal  on  a  grand  scale,  in  which  the 
regular  guests  would  be  left  out  in  the  cold,  while  the  halt 
and  blind  were  gathered  from  the  highways  and  hedges  to 
enjoy  the  fat  things.^  No  man  would  have  laid  on  the  colors 
in  the  opening  description  of  Dives  at  his  feasting  and 
Lazarus  among  the  dogs  as  Jesus  did,^  who  had  not  felt 
vividly  the  gulf  that  separates  the  social  classes.  If  that 
parable  came  from  the  lips  of  Jesus,  that  is  enough  to  mark 
his  social  spirit.     Ex  ungue  leonem. 

Jesus  proceeded  from  the  common  people.  He  had  worked 
as  a  carpenter  for  years,  and  there  was  nothing  in  his  think- 
ing to  neutralize  the  sense  of  class  solidarity  which  grows  up 
under  such  circumstances.  The  common  people  heard  him 
gladly '  because  he  said  what  was  in  their  hearts.  His  trium- 
phal entry  into  Jerusalem  was  a  poor  man's  procession ;  the 
coats  from  their  backs  were  his  tapestry,  their  throats  his 
brass  band,  and  a  donkey  was  his  steed.  During  the  last 
days  in  Jerusalem  he  was  constantly  walking  into  the  lion's 
cage  and  brushing  the  sleeve  of  death.  It  was  the  fear  of 
the  people  which  protected  him  while  he  bearded  the  powers 
that  be.  His  midnight  arrest,  his  hasty  trial,  the  anxious 
efforts  to  work  on  the  feelings  of  the  crowd  against  him,  were 
all  a  tribute  to  his  standing  with  the  common  people. 

Dr.  W.  M.  Thomson,  in  his  "Land  and  the  Book,"  ^ 
beautifully  says:  "With  uncontrolled  power  to  possess  all, 
he  owned  nothing.  He  had  no  place  to  be  born  in  but  an- 
other man's  stable,  no  closet  to  pray  in  but  the  wilderness, 
no  place  to  die  but  on  the  cross  of  an  enemy,  and  no  grave 
but  one  lent  by  a  friend."    That,  perhaps,  overstates  his 

*  Luke  14.  15-24;  Matthew  22.  1-14.  *  Mark  12.  37. 

'  Luke  16.  19-21.  *  p.  407. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS   OF   JESUS  85 

poverty.  But  it  is  fair  to  say  that  by  birth  and  training,  by 
moral  insight  and  conviction,  by  his  sympathy  for  those  who 
were  down,  and  by  his  success  in  winning  them  to  his  side, 
Jesus  was  a  man  of  the  common  people,  and  he  never  deserted 
their  cause  as  so  many  others  have  done.  Whenever  the 
people  have  caught  a  glimpse  of  him  as  he  really  was,  their 
hearts  have  hailed  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  one  of  them. 

There  was  a  revolutionary  consciousness  in  Jesus ;  not,  of  The  revo- 
course,  in  the  common  use  of  the  word  "  revolutionary,"  which  conscious- 
connects  it  with  violence  and  bloodshed.     But  Jesus  knew  "ess  of 

Tcsus. 

that  he  had  come  to  kindle  a  fire  on  earth.  Much  as  he  loved 
peace,  he  knew  that  the  actual  result  of  his  work  would  be 
not  peace  but  the  sword.  His  mother  in  her  song  had 
recognized  in  her  own  experience  the  settled  custom  of  God 
to  "put  down  the  proud  and  exalt  them  of  low  degree,"  to 
"fill  the  hungry  with  good  things  and  to  send  the  rich  empty 
away."  ^  King  Robert  of  Sicily  recognized  the  revolutionary 
ring  in  those  phrases,  and  thought  it  well  that  the  Magnificat 
was  sung  only  in  Latin.  The  son  of  Mary  expected  a  great 
reversal  of  values.  The  first  would  be  last  and  the  last  would 
be  first.^  He  saw  that  what  was  exalted  among  man  was  an 
abomination  before  God,^  and  therefore  these  exalted  things 
had  no  glamour  for  his  eye.  This  revolutionary  note  runs 
even  through  the  beatitudes  where  we  should  least  expect  it. 
The  point  of  them  is  that  henceforth  those  were  to  be  blessed 
whom  the  world  had  not  blessed,  for  the  kingdom  of  God 
would  reverse  their  relative  standing.  Now  the  poor  and 
the  hungry  and  sad  were  to  be  satisfied  and  comforted ;  the 
meek  who  had  been  shouldered  aside  by  the  ruthless  would 

'  Luke  I.  52-53.  ^  Mark  10.  31.  '  Luke  16.  15. 


86  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

■get  their  chance  to  inherit  the  earth,  and  conflict  and  per- 
secution would  be  inevitable  in  the  process/ 

We  are  apt  to  forget  that  his  attack  on  the  religious  leaders 
and  authorities  of  his  day  was  of  revolutionary  boldness  and 
thoroughness.  He  called  the  ecclesiastical  leaders  hypocrites, 
blind  leaders  who  fumbled  in  their  casuistry,  and  everywhere 
missed  the  decisive  facts  in  teaching  right  and  wrong.  Their 
piety  was  no  piety ;  their  law  was  inadequate ;  they  harmed 
the  men  whom  they  wanted  to  convert.^  Even  the  publicans 
and  harlots  had  a  truer  piety  than  theirs.^  If  we  remember 
that  religion  was  still  the  foundation  of  the  Jewish  State, 
and  that  the  religious  authorities  were  the  pillars  of  existing 
society,  much  as  in  mediaeval  Catholic  Europe,  we  shall 
realize  how  revolutionary  were  his  invectives.  It  was  like 
Luther  anathematizing  the  Catholic  hierarchy. 

His  mind  was  similarly  liberated  from  spiritual  subjec- 
tion to  the  existing  civil  powers.  He  called  Herod,  his  own 
liege  sovereign,  "that  fox."*  When  the  mother  of  James 
and  John  tried  to  steal  a  march  on  the  others  and  secure  for 
her  sons  a  pledge  of  the  highest  places  in  the  Messianic 
kingdom,^  Jesus  felt  that  this  was  a  backsliding  into  the 
scrambling  methods  of  the  present  social  order,  in  which 
each  tries  to  make  the  others  serve  him,  and  he  is  greatest 
who  can  compel  service  from  most.  In  the  new  social  order, 
which  was  expressed  in  his  own  life,  each  must  seek  to  give 
the  maximum  of  service,  and  he  would  be  greatest  who  would 
serve  utterly.  In  that  connection  he  sketched  with  a  few 
strokes  the  pseudo-greatness  of  the  present  aristocracy:  "Ye 

*  Matthew  5.  1-12.  *  Luke  13.  32. 

*  See  the  whole  of  Matthew  23.  *  Matthew  20.  20-28. 
'  Matthew  21.  23-32. 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS   OF   JESUS  87 

know  that  they  which  are  supposed  to  rule  over  the  nations 
lord  it  over  them,  and  their  great  ones  tyrannize  over  them. 
Thus  shall  it  not  be  among  you."  ^  The  monarchies  and 
aristocracies  have  always  lived  on  the  fiction  that  they  exist 
for  the  good  of  the  people,  and  yet  it  is  an  appalling  fact  how 
few  kings  have  loved  their  people  and  have  lived  to  serve. 
Usually  the  great  ones  have  regarded  the  people  as  their 
oyster.  In  a  similar  saying  reported  by  Luke,  Jesus  wittily 
adds  that  these  selfish  exploiters  of  the  people  graciously 
allow  themselves  to  be  called  "  Benefactors."  ^  His  eyes  were 
open  to  the  unintentional  irony  of  the  titles  in  which  the 
"majesties,"  "excellencies,"  and  "holinesses"  of  the  world 
have  always  decked  themselves.  Every  time  the  inbred 
instinct  to  seek  precedence  cropped  up  among  his  disciples 
he  sternly  suppressed  it.  They  must  not  allow  themselves 
to  be  called  Rabbi  or  Father  or  Master,  "for  all  ye  are 
brothers."  ^  Christ's  ideal  of  society  involved  the  abolition 
of  rank  and  the  extinction  of  those  badges  of  rank  in  which 
former  inequality  was  incrusted.  The  only  title  to  greatness 
was  to  be  distinguished  service  at  cost  to  self.*  All  this  shows 
the  keenest  insight  into  the  masked  selfishness  of  those  who 
hold  power,  and  involves  a  revolutionary  consciousness, 
emancipated  from  reverence  for  things  as  they  are. 

The  text,  "Give  to  Caesar  what  is  Caesar's,"  ^  seems  to 
mark  off  a  definite  sphere  of  power  for  the  emperor, 
coordinate  with  God's  sphere.     It  implies  passive  obedience 

*  The  English  translation,  "exercise  authority  over  them,"  is  far  too 
weak  to  do  justice  to  the  preposition  in  Kare^ovixid^ovcnv.  Weizsaecker  trans- 
lates it  7;ergett;o//i^e«;  the  Twentieth  Century  New  Testament,  "oppress." 
It  carries  the  meaning  both  of  injustice  and  coercion. 

^  Luke  22.  25.  *  Matthew  20.  26-28. 

'  Matthew  23.  1-12.  '  Matthew  22.  15-22. 


88  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

to  constituted  authority  and  above  all  guarantees  Caesar's 
right  to  levy  taxes.  Consequently  it  has  been  very  dear  to 
all  who  were  anxious  to  secure  the  sanctions  of  religion  for 
the  existing  political  order.  During  the  Middle  Ages  that 
text  was  one  of  the  spiritual  pillars  that  supported  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire.^  But  in  fact  we  misread  it  if  we  take  it  as 
a  solemn  decision,  fixing  two  coordinate  spheres  of  life,  the 
religious  and  the  political.  His  opponents  were  trying  to 
comer  Jesus.  If  he  said  "pay  the  Roman  tax,"  he  dis- 
gusted the  people.  If  he  said  "do  not  pay,"  Rome  would 
seize  him,  for  its  patience  was  short  when  its  taxes  were 
touched.  Jesus  wittily  cut  the  Gordian  knot  by  calling  for 
one  of  the  coins.  It  bore  the  hated  Roman  face  and  stamp  on 
it — clear  evidence  whence  it  issued  and  to  whom  it  belonged. 
If  they  filled  their  pockets  with  Caesar's  money,  let  them 
pay  Caesar's  tax.  The  significant  fact  to  us  is  that  Jesus 
spoke  from  an  inv/ard  plane  which  rose  superior  to  the  entire 
question.  It  was  a  vital  question  for  Jewish  religion;  it 
did  not  even  touch  the  religion  of  Jesus.  Moreover,  it  was 
not  purely  a  religious  question  with  them;  matters  that 
concern  money  somehow  never  are  purely  religious.  In 
paying  tribute  to  Caesar,  they  seemed  to  deny  the  sovereignty 
of  Jehovah,  Israel's  only  king ;  that  was,  indeed,  one  point  for 
grief.  But  another  point  was  that  they  had  to  pay,  pay,  pay ; 
and  money  is  such  a  dear  thing !  Jesus  felt  none  of  their 
fond  reverence  for  cash.  Hence  he  could  say,  Give  to 
Csesar  the  stuff  that  belongs  to  him,  and  give  to  God  what 
he  claims. 

We  have  another  incident  in  which  his  inward  attitude  to 
taxation  comes  out.^  The  Jews  annually  paid  a  poll-tax  of 
^  See  Bryce,  "Holy  Roman  Empire,"  112-113.  '  Matthew  17.  24-27. 


THE    SOCIAL    AIMS    OF    JESUS  89 

half  a  shekel  for  the  support  of  the  temple  worship,  which 
sufficed  to  maintain  it  in  splendor.  The  collector  met  Peter 
and  asked  if  his  master  did  not  intend  to  pay.  Peter,  prob- 
ably knowing  his  custom  hitherto,  said,  "  Certainly."  When 
he  came  into  the  house,  Jesus,  who  seems  to  have  overheard 
the  conversation,  asked  him  from  whom  the  kings  of  the 
earth  usually  exacted  taxes,  from  their  subjects  or  their  sons. 
Peter  rightly  judged  that  the  subjects  usually  did  the  paying, 
and  the  members  of  the  royal  family  were  exempt.  "Then," 
said  Jesus,  "as  we  are  sons  of  God  and  princes  of  the  blood- 
royal,  we  are  exempt  from  God's  temple-tax.  But  lest  we 
give  offence,  go  catch  a  fish  and  pay  the  tax."  We  all  know 
by  experience  that  the  expression  of  the  face  and  eye  are  often 
quite  essential  for  understanding  the  spirit  of  a  conversation. 
We  must  think  of  Jesus  with  a  smile  on  his  lips  during  this 
conversation  with  his  friend  Peter.  Yet  something  of  his 
most  fundamental  attitude  to  existing  institutions  found 
expression  in  this  gentle  raillery.  He  was  inwardly  free. 
He  paid  because  he  wanted  to,  and  not  because  he  had  to. 

Camille  Desmoulins,  one  of  the  spiritual  leaders  of  the 
French  Revolution,  called  Jesus  "le  bon  sansculotte."  Emile 
de  Laveleye,  the  eminent  Belgian  economist,  who  had  the 
deepest  reverence  for  Christianity  as  a  social  force,  said,  "If 
Christianity  were  taught  and  understood  conformably  to  the 
spirit  of  its  Founder,  the  existing  social  organism  could 
not  last  a  day."  ^  James  Russell  Lowell  said,  "There  is 
dynamite  enough  in  the  New  Testament,  if  illegitimately 
applied,  to  blow  all  our  existing  institutions  to  atoms."  ^ 

These  men  have  not  seen  amiss.     Jesus  was  not  a  child  of 

'  "  Primitive  Property,"  xxxi. 

^  In  his  essay  on  "  The  Progress  of  the  World." 


90  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

this  world.  He  did  not  revere  the  men  it  called  great ;  he 
did  not  accept  its  customs  and  social  usages  as  final;  his 
moral  conceptions  did  not  run  along  the  grooves  marked  out 
by  it.  He  nourished  within  his  soul  the  ideal  of  a  common 
hfe  so  radically  different  from  the  present  that  it  involved  a 
reversal  of  values,  a  revolutionary  displacement  of  existing 
relations.  This  ideal  was  not  merely  a  beautiful  dream  to 
solace  his  soul.  He  lived  it  out  in  his  own  daily  life. 
He  urged  others  to  live  that  way.  He  held  that  it  was  the 
only  true  life,  and  that  the  ordinary  way  was  misery  and  folly. 
He  dared  to  believe  that  it  would  triumph.  When  he  saw 
that  the  people  were  turning  from  him,  and  that  his  nation 
had  chosen  the  evil  way  and  was  drifting  toward  the  rocks 
that  would  destroy  it,  unutterable  sadness  filled  his  soul,  but 
he  never  abandoned  his  faith  in  the  final  triumph  of  that 
kingdom  of  God  for  which  he  had  lived.  For  the  present, 
the  cross;  but  beyond  the  cross,  the  kingdom  of  God.  If 
he  was  not  to  achieve  it  now,  he  would  return  and  do  it 
then. 

That  was  the  faith  of  Jesus.  Have  his  followers  shared 
it?  We  shall  see  later  what  changes  and  limitations  the 
original  purpose  and  spirit  of  Christianity  suffered  in  the 
course  of  history.  But  the  Church  has  never  been  able  to 
get  entirely  away  from  the  revolutionary  spirit  of  Jesus.  It 
is  an  essential  doctrine  of  Christianity  that  the  world  is 
fundamentally  good  and  practically  bad,  for  it  was  made  by 
God,  but  is  now  controlled  by  sin.  If  a  man  wants  to  be 
a  Christian,  he  must  stand  over  against  things  as  they  are  and 
condemn  them  in  the  name  of  that  higher  conception  of  life 
which  Jesus  revealed.  If  a  man  is  satisfied  with  things  as 
they  are,  he  belongs  to  the  other  side.     For  many  centuries 


THE   SOCIAL   AIMS   OF   JESUS  9I 

the  Church  felt  so  deeply  that  the  Christian  conception  of  life 
and  the  actual  social  Hfe  are  incompatible,  that  any  one  who 
wanted  to  live  the  genuine  Christian  hfe,  had  to  leave  the 
world  and  hve  in  a  monastic  community.  Protestantism  has 
abandoned  the  monastic  life  and  settled  down  to  live  in  the 
world.  If  that  imphes  that  it  accepts  the  present  condition 
as  good  and  final,  it  means  a  silencing  of  its  Christian  protest 
and  its  surrender  to  "the  world."  There  is  another  alter- 
native. Ascetic  Christianity  called  the  world  evil  and  left  it. 
Humanity  is  waiting  for  a  revolutionary  Christianity  which 
wiU  call  the  world  evil  and  change  it.  We  do  not  want  "to 
blow  all  our  existing  institutions  to  atoms,"  but  we  do  want 
to  remould  every  one  of  them.  A  tank  of  gasolene  can  blow 
a  car  sky-high  in  a  single  explosion,  or  push  it  to  the  top  of  a 
hill  in  a  perpetual  succession  of  little  explosions.  We  need 
a  combination  beween  the  faith  of  Jesus  in  the  need  and  the 
possibility  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  the  modern  compre- 
hension of  the  organic  development  of  human  society. 

We  saw  at  the  outset  of  our  discussion  that  Jesus  was  not 
a  mere  social  reformer.  Rehgion  was  the  heart  of  his  life, 
and  all  that  he  said  on  social  relations  was  said  from  the  reli- 
gious point  of  view.  He  has  been  called  the  first  socialist. 
He  was  more ;  he  was  the  first  real  man,  the  inaugurator  of  a 
new  humanity.  But  as  such  he  bore  within  him  the  germs 
of  a  new  social  and  political  order.  He  was  too  great  to  be 
the  Saviour  of  a  fractional  part  of  human  hfe.  His  redemp- 
tion extends  to  all  human  needs  and  powers  and  relations. 
Theologians  have  felt  no  hesitation  in  founding  a  system  of 
speculative  thought  on  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  and  yet  Jesus 
was  never  an  inhabitant  of  the  realm  of  speculative  thought. 
He    has    been  made  the  founder  and  organizer  of  a  great 


92  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

ecclesiastical  machine,  which  derives  authority  for  its  offices 
and  institutions  from  him,  and  yet  "hardly  any  problem  of 
exegesis  is  more  difficult  than  to  discover  in  the  gospels  an 
administrative  or  organizing  or  ecclesiastical  Christ."  ^  There 
is  at  least  as  much  justification  in  invoking  his  name  to-day  as 
the  champion  of  a  great  movement  for  a  more  righteous  social 
life.  He  was  neither  a  theologian,  nor  an  ecclesiastic,  nor  a 
socialist.  But  if  we  were  forced  to  classify  him  either  with 
the  great  theologians  who  elaborated  the  fine  distinctions  of 
scholasticism;  or  with  the  mighty  popes  and  princes  of  the 
Church  who  built  up  their  power  in  his  name;  or  with  the 
men  who  are  giving  their  heart  and  life  to  the  propaganda  of 
a  new  social  system  —  where  should  we  place  him  ? 

^  Peabody,  "  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question,"  89. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  SOCIAL  IMPETUS  OF  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY 

To  what  extent  were  the  social  aims  of  Jesus  seized  and 
carried  out  by  the  Church  which  called  itself  by  his  name? 
Did  his  early  followers  have  the  same  all-embracing  and 
lofty  conceptions  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  the  same  passionate 
love  for  justice,  and  the  same  humane  tenderness  and  broth- 
erly freedom  which  make  the  soul  of  Jesus  the  luminous 
centre  of  our  moral  and  spiritual  world  ? 

It  would  be  miraculous  if  they  had.  "What  hand  and 
brain  went  ever  paired?"  There  is  a  gap  even  between  the 
ideal  cherished  by  any  lofty  mind  and  the  realization  which 
he  can  give  to  it  in  his  own  action.  There  are  few  men  who 
maintain  their  first  love  unchilled  to  their  colder  age  and  their 
early  purposes  untarnished  by  policy  and  concession  to  things 
as  they  are.  But  as  soon  as  the  thoughts  of  a  great  spiritual 
leader  pass  to  others  and  form  the  animating  principle  of  a 
party  or  school  or  sect,  there  is  an  inevitable  drop.  The 
disciples  cannot  keep  pace  with  the  sweep  of  the  master. 
They  flutter  where  he  soared.  They  coarsen  and  material- 
ize his  dreams.  They  put  their  trust  in  forms  and  organiza- 
tion where  he  dared  to  trust  in  the  spirit.  They  repeat  his 
words,  but  they  make  mere  formulas  of  his  prophetic  figures 
of  speech.  They  may  join  the  Order  of  St.  Francis,  but  they 
will  not  call  the  birds  their  sisters  and  the  sun  their  brother. 
Belike  Brother  Elias  becomes  the  head  of  the  ''little  brothers" 

93 


94  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL  CRISIS 

whom  the  poet-saint  of  Assisi  called  out  to  serve  the  Lady 
Poverty/  That  is  the  tragedy  of  all  who  lead.  The  farther 
they  are  in  advance  of  their  times,  the  more  will  they  be  mis- 
understood and  misrepresented  by  the  very  men  who  swear 
by  their  name  and  strive  to  enforce  their  ideas  and  aims.  If 
the  followers  of  Jesus  had  preserved  his  thought  and  spirit 
without  leakage,  evaporation,  or  adulteration,  it  would  be  a 
fact  unique  in  history. 

But  they  did  not.  Few  held  fast  his  spiritual  liberty;  the 
Jewish  Christians  remained  in  some  measure  of  servility  to 
the  old  Law;  the  Gentile  Christians  early  fashioned  a  new 
Law  and  obeyed  it  in  the  old  spirit  of  legalism.  Few  rose  to 
his  conception  of  worshipping  God  simply  by  a  reverent  and 
loving  life ;  the  Church  early  developed  Christian  sacraments 
and  superstitious  rites  with  which  to  placate  and  appease  the 
Father  of  Jesus.  Few  made  his  conceptions  of  the  right 
human  hfe  their  inward  possession.  Imagine  Jesus,  with  the 
dust  of  Galilee  on  his  sandals,  coming  into  the  church  of  St. 
Sophia  in  Constantinople  in  the  fifth  century,  listening  to 
dizzy  doctrinal  definitions  about  the  relation  of  the  divine  and 
human  in  his  nature,  watching  the  priests  performing  the 
gorgeous  acts  of  worship,  reciting  long  and  set  prayers,  and 
offering  his  own  mystical  body  as  a  renewed  sacrifice  to  their 
God !    Has  any  one  ever  been  misunderstood  as  Jesus  has  ? 

If  the  religious  and  moral  thoughts  and  aims  of  Jesus  were 
thus  paralyzed  and  distorted  from  the  outset,  we  may  take  it 
for  granted  as  a  matter  of  course  that  his  social  aims  and 
ideas  suffered  a  similar  diminution  in  scope,  force,  and  purity. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  should  find  that  primitive  Christi- 
anity was  still  inspired  by  high  social  aims  and  still  instinct 

^  See  Sabatier,  "  Life  of  St.  Francis." 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  95 

with  social  energy,  it  would  furnish  an  added  argument  of  the 
highest  significance  for  the  strength  of  the  social  impetus, 
originally  imparted  by  Jesus  and  inherent  in  the  historical 
movement  inaugurated  by  him. 

It  is  necessary  to  remind  ourselves  that  our  information  The  limita- 
for  the  purposes  of  such  an  inquiry  is  meagre  and  incomplete,  information. 
The  early  Christians  did  not  belong  to  the  literary  class  with 
whom  the  impulse  to  record  its  doings  on  paper  is  more  or  less 
instinctive.  They  had  no  motive  for  making  elaborate  his- 
torical records  of  their  life.  They  expected  the  speedy  end  of 
the  world  and  never  dreamed  of  a  posterity  that  would  cherish 
every  scrap  of  information  about  them.  Even  the  sayings  of 
the  Master  were  not  recorded  till  years  had  gone  by.  What- 
ever was  written,  was  to  serve  some  immediate  and  passing 
occasion,  and  in  writings  of  that  sort  the  most  important 
facts,  which  really  make  up  the  bulk  of  the  common  life, 
are  often  not  even  mentioned,  because  they  are  so  well 
understood  by  all  parties  concerned  that  they  go  without 
saying.  We  have  no  document  whatever  which  sets  out  to 
furnish  a  coherent  account  of  the  moral  or  social  life  of  the 
early  Christian  communities. 

Moreover,  if  there  were  any  radical,  political,  or  social  ideas 
current  in  early  Christianity,  there  was  good  cause  for  not 
writing  them  down  or  publishing  them  freely.  The  Roman 
government  was  tolerant  and  almost  indifferent  on  questions 
of  religious  belief  and  worship,  but  suspicious  and  alert 
against  anything  that  smelled  like  smouldering  revolutionary 
fire.^  Even  social  clubs  and  benevolent  associations  were 
under  sharp  surveillance  lest  they  mask  political  designs. 

*  Harnack,  "  Expansion  of  Christianity,"  Bk.  Ill,  Chap.  V. 


96  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

There  is  one  relic  of  primitive  Christianity  which  embod- 
ies revolutionary  hopes  and  passions,  and  it  is  significant 
that  it  purposely  veils  its  meaning.  The  contemporary 
political  powers  are  described  under  the  image  of  beasts; 
the  capital  city  is  called  by  the  mystic  name  of  Babylon ;  the 
keyword  of  its  allegories  is  hidden  in  the  number  666,  in 
which  the  letters  of  the  word  are  translated  into  their  nu- 
merical equivalents.^  Political  thought  and  utterance  are  so 
absolutely  free  in  England  and  America  that  we  can  scarcely 
conceive  along  what  subterranean  channels  political  and 
social  ideas  have  to  move  under  more  despotic  conditions; 
how  unsigned  letters  and  poems  pass  from  hand  to  hand; 
how  a  whisper,  an  innocent  name,  or  a  sprig  of  flowers  will 
convey  a  world  of  meaning.  But  what  is  meant  to  evade  con- 
temporary scrutiny,  is  likely  also  to  escape  the  knowledge  of 
later  times  and  to  perish  without  trace.  We  make  much  of 
those  passages  of  the  New  Testament  which  prove  the  politi- 
cal loyalty  of  the  early  Christians  to  the  Roman  Empire.  But 
possibly  one  purpose  in  Luke's  mind  when  he  wrote  the  Book 
of  Acts  for  the  use  of  Theophilus  was  to  present  an  apologetic 
of  Christianity  to  the  upper  classes;  and  when  Paul  ex- 
horted the  Romans  to  obey  the  government,  he  may  have  had 
in  mind  the  possibility  that  in  the  capital  of  the  world  his 
letter  might  drop  into  influential  hands.  If  there  was  even  a 
shade  of  such  a  side-motive  in  these  writings,  we  must  allow 
for  it  in  constructing  our  conception  of  the  political  attitude 
of  primitive  Christianity. 

The  suggestion  just  made  is  somewhat  conjectural.  The 
following  is  quite  certain.  No  books  of  the  first  century  have 
reached  us  unless  later  times  had  interest  enough  in  them  to 

*  Apoc.  13. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY  97 

copy  them.  The  survival  of  a  book  depended,  not  on  the 
interest  it  awakened  in  the  first  century,  nor  on  the  interest  it 
would  awaken  to-day,  but  on  the  interest  which  the  third  or 
fourth  century  took  in  it.  If  it  was  written  by  some  man 
whom  that  subsequent  age  revered  as  a  Christian  authority, 
or  if  it  lent  welcome  support  to  doctrines  or  institutions  then 
struggling  for  the  mastery,  it  was  copied  and  quoted  and  had 
a  chance  of  coming  to  our  hands.  If  not,  the  material  on 
which  the  earliest  copies  were  written  was  sure  to  perish  in 
some  one  of  a  hundred  ways,  and  the  book  itself  disappeared 
from  human  sight  forever.  There  were  books  which  were 
widely  read  and  loved  in  the  Church  of  the  second  century, 
but  which  fell  into  disrepute  and  oblivion  because  they  did 
not  suit  the  tastes  and  standards  of  the  age  schooled  by 
the  great  doctrinal  controversies.  It  is  wholly  likely  that  the 
same  fate  would  befall  any  popular  literature  in  which  the 
social  feelings  and  hopes  of  the  earliest  generations  were 
embodied.  They,  too,  became  antiquated  and  uncongenial  to 
the  churchmen  of  the  later  age,  especially  after  the  Church 
had  emerged  from  its  oppressed  condition  and  was  fostered 
and  fed  by  the  Empire. 

There  were  various  important  drifts  and  movements  in 
early  Christianity,  but  only  those  which  were  finally  vic- 
torious in  Catholic  Christianity  secured  a  fair  and  perma- 
nent historical  record.  For  instance,  the  great  Gnostic  move- 
ment, which  was  as  important  in  the  world  of  thought  in  the 
second  century  as  the  evolutionary  idea  is  in  our  own  age,  was 
finally  thrust  out  by  the  Church,  and  of  all  its  rich  literature 
we  have  only  one  book  left ;  otherwise  we  are  dependent  for 
our  information  on  the  partisan  statements  and  garbled  quo- 
tations of  its  enemies. 


98  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  Jewish  Christian  Church  was  at  first  the  whole  of 
the  Christian  Church.  Gradually  it  was  outstripped  by  the 
rapid  growth  of  the  Gentile  churches,  and  through  its  doctrinal 
conservatism  and  prejudices,  and  through  the  force  of  out- 
ward events,  it  was  left  in  the  lurch  of  the  larger  movement  and 
gradually  separated  from  it  in  sympathy.  Jewish  Christian 
bodies  survived  to  the  fifth  century,  but  they  were  then  re- 
garded as  heretical  and  their  literature  had  little  chance  of 
survival.  The  Epistle  of  James  and  the  Revelation  of  John 
V  are  more  or  less  directly  the  product  of  this  Jewish  Christi- 
anity. They  were  saved  from  the  deluge  of  oblivion  because 
they  were  admitted  into  the  ark  of  the  Canon ;  and  they  were 
thus  admitted  only  because  they  bore  the  names  of  apostles, 
and  then  only  reluctantly. 

Now,  the  Jewish  Christian  churches  represented  the 
radical  social  wing  of  the  primitive  Church.  They  were 
leavened  by  the  ancient  democracy  of  the  Hebrew  prophets 
and  of  post-exilic  Judaism.  In  popular  Jewish  thought  the 
poor  and  the  godly  were  simply  identified,  and  there  was  a 
frequent  and  strident. note  of  hostility  to  the  upper  classes. 
The  Epistle  of  James  shares  this  Jewish  spirit.  It  is  one  of 
the  most  democratic  books  of  the  New  Testament.  "Let  a 
brother  in  humble  circumstances  boast  of  his  exalted  rank, 
and  a  rich  brother  of  his  humble  rank,  for  like  the  flower  of 
the  grass  will  he  pass  away.  In  the  midst  of  his  business  will 
he  wilt  away."  ^  He  describes  indignantly  how  the  rich  man 
is  ushered  obsequiously  into  a  front  pew,  while  the  poor  man 
is  sent  into  the  gallery.  That  seems  to  him  a  reversal  of  God 's 
judgment,  for  the  poor  as  a  class  have  been  chosen  by  God  to 
be  rich  in  the  Christian  faith  and  heirs  of  the  coming  kingdom, 
*  James  i.  g-u. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF   PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  99 

while  the  rich  as  a  class  are  the  oppressors  of  the  Christians 
and  the  enemies  of  the  name  of  Christ/  He  pronounces  an 
invective  against  the  rich  which  would  seem  intolerably 
denunciatory  in  the  mouth  of  a  modern  socialist  preacher: 
"Here  now,  you  rich  men,  weep  and  wail  for  the  calamities 
coming  upon  you  !  Your  wealth  is  rotted  and  your  garments 
are  moth-eaten  !  Your  gold  and  silver  have  rusted,  and  their 
rust  shall  accuse  you  and  eat  into  your  flesh  like  fire.  You 
have  foolishly  piled  up  wealth  just  before  the  world  ends. 
Look  now,  the  wages  of  the  workingmen  who  have  reaped 
your  fields,  which  you  have  fraudulently  retained,  cry  out 
against  you  and  the  outcries  of  the  reapers  have  come  to  the 
ears  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  You  have  lived  in  luxury  and 
wantonness  on  earth.  You  have  fattened  your  hearts  like 
cattle  for  a  day  of  slaughter.  You  have  condemned  in  the 
courts  and  done  to  death  the  just  man  who  offers  no  resist- 
ance to  you."  ^  The  significance  of  such  a  passage  lies  not 
in  itself,  but  in  the  body  of  sentiment  of  which  it  is  a  mani- 
festation. 

The  Apocalypse  of  John  is  part  of  the  popular  apocalyptic 
literature  which  flourished  both  among  the  Jews  and  the 
Jewish  Christians,  and  the  hope  of  a  revolutionary  overturn- 
ing is  the  essence  of  the  apocalyptic  hope,  as  we  shall  see 
later. 

The  radical  social  spirit  of  the  Jewish  Christian  churches 
can  also  be  gauged  in  a  measure  by  the  sayings  of  Jesus. 
These  sayings  were  kept  alive  and  transmitted  by  word  of 
mouth  for  years  before  any  larger  attempt  was  made  to  re- 
cord them  in  writing,  and  the  Jewish  churches  furnished  the 
collective  memory  which  treasured  and  preserved  them.     It  is 

'  James  2.  1-9.  ^  James  5.  1-6. 


ICX>  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

safe  to  say  that  in  the  main  only  those  portions  of  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  which  in  some  way  were  dear  and  congenial  to  these 
churches  were  thus  preserved.  If,  therefore,  the  synoptic 
teachings  of  Jesus  as  we  now  have  them  are  saturated  with 
social  thought,  it  is  because  such  thought  echoed  the  senti- 
^  ment  of  the  Jewish  Christian  community/  In  the  preceding 
chapter  I  have  declined  to  follow  those  scholars  who  ascribe 
much  of  the  radical  social  teaching  in  Luke  to  Ebionitic,  that 
is,  to  Jewish  Christian  influence.  If  it  should  be  true  that 
any  part  of  that  material  is  not  due  to  Jesus,  but  to  those 
who,  in  transmitting  his  thoughts,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously infused  something  of  their  own  social  passion  into 
them,  Jesus  would  be  relieved  in  part  of  the  charge  of  radi- 
calism, but  the  Jewish  Christian  Church  would  be  dyed  with  a 
deeper  scarlet.  We  have  an  interesting  example  of  such  an 
editorial  intensification  of  the  social  animus.  The  "  Gospel 
according  to  the  Hebrews"  was  a  very  ancient  gospel,  which 
originated  and  circulated  in  Jewish  Christian  circles.  Only 
a  few  fragments  of  it  are  preserved.  One  of  them  tells  the 
story  of  the  rich  young  ruler  in  this  form:^  — 

"Said  to  him  the  other  rich  man,  'Master,  what  good 
thing  must  I  do  to  hve?'  He  said  to  him,  'Man,  do  the 
law  and  the  prophets.'  He  replied,  'I  have.'  He  said  to 
him,  'Go,  sell  all  thou  possessest  and  distribute  it  to  the 
poor  and  come  follow  me.'  But  the  rich  man  began  to 
scratch  his  head  and  it  pleased  him  not.  And  the  Lord  said 
to  him:  'How  sayest  thou,  I  have  done  the  law  and  the 

*  This  line  of  investigation  is  followed  with  great  skill  and  effectiveness  in 
Weizsaecker,  "  History  of  the  Apostolic  Age." 

'  Hilgenfeld,  "Novum  Testamentum  extra  canonem,"  p.  i6;  E.  B. 
Nicholson,  "The  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews,"  London,  1879. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF  PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY  lOI 

prophets  ?  For  it  is  written  in  the  law :  thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself;  and  see,  many  of  thy  brothers,  sons  of 
Abraham,  are  covered  with  j&lth,  dying  of  hunger,  and  thy 
house  is  full  of  much  goods,  and  nothing  at  all  comes  out  of  it 
to  them.'  And  turning  he  said  to  his  disciple  Simon,  who 
sat  by  him,  '  Simon,  son  of  John,  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to 
enter  through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven.'  " 

The  point  of  our  argument  is  this.  The  Jewish  Christian 
communities  were  numerically  and  spiritually  an  important 
part  of  earliest  Christianity.  In  many  respects  they  most 
faithfully  preserved  the  direct  impress  of  Jesus,  for  they  were 
the  product  of  the  same  moral  environment  which  had  nur- 
tured his  mind.  But  the  main  current  of  Christian  life,  which 
finally  resulted  in  Catholic  Christianity,  followed  other  chan- 
nels and  left  Jewish  Christianity  like  a  land-locked  bay, 
and  of  its  literary  products  only  a  few  remnants  were  pre- 
served. Consequently  the  social  spirit  which  glowed  in  that 
part  of  the  Christian  Church  is  not  adequately  represented  in 
early  Christian  literature  as  we  now  know  it,  and  our  general 
impression  of  the  social  impetus  in  primitive  Christianity 
is  to  that  extent  weakened  and  imperfect.  It  is  not  at  all 
unlikely  that  a  similar  fate  befell  other  writings  which  shared 
the  same  qualities. 

Again,  of  those  writings  which  did  survive,  only  a  limited 
number  were  embodied  in  the  Canon  of  the  New  Testament, 
and  only  those  that  were  embodied  are  known  to  the  mass 
of  Christian  readers  to-day.  They  have  to  form  their 
judgment  of  the  nature  of  original  Christianity  solely  from 
their  impressions  of  the  New  Testament.  But  an  impression 
based  only  on  that  material  is  bound  to  be  one-sided.     If  the 


I02  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

gospels  and  the  writings  of  one  man  were  eliminated  from 
our  New  Testament,  the  compass  of  what  remains  would  be 
very  slight.  Paul  immensely  preponderates  in  the  bulk  of 
our  material,  and  so  we  get  the  impression  that  his  ideas  and 
points  of  view  were  those  generally  prevailing  in  the  apostolic 
age.  That  is  probably  far  from  true.  In  many  respects  Paul 
was  a  free  lance,  the  propagandist  of  a  new  theology,  a  great 
dissenter  and  nonconformist,  who  was  viewed  with  distrust 
or  hostility  by  the  representatives  of  an  older  theology  and  a 
more  authoritative  organization.  He  was  a  mind  of  immense 
stature  and  virility,  but  it  was  impossible  that  so  intense  a 
spirit  should  embody  all  sides  of  Christianity  with  equal 
vigor  and  in  rounded  harmony.  Paul  was  a  radical  in  the- 
ology, but  a  social  conservative,  a  combination  frequently 
met  to-day.  If  we  assume  that  in  this  respect  he  is  an  ex- 
ponent of  the  whole  of  primitive  Christianity,  we  may  be 
misled.  Yet  even  Paul  was  not  as  apathetic  toward  social 
questions  as  is  usually  assumed. 

And  finally  the  same  caution  with  which  we  began  our 
study  of  the  social  aims  of  Jesus  applies  to  any  study  of  the 
social  contents  of  early  Christianity.  We  have  not  been 
accustomed  to  read  the  records  from  this  point  of  view.  We 
have  read  them  for  spiritual  devotion.  We  have  studied 
them  from  the  theological  and  ecclesiastical  point  of  view. 
The  records  as  they  lie  before  us  are  incomplete  and  one- 
sided, and  even  what  does  bear  on  our  purposes  is  overlaid 
for  us  by  other  interests,  by  preconceptions  and  long-standing 
habits  of  mind.  We  must  stretch  a  sympathetic  hand  back 
to  our  brothers  of  the  first  and  second  century  and  see  if  they 
do  not  respond  with  the  warm  and  mystic  clasp  that  belongs 
to  the  order  of  social  Christians  of  all  times.     Of  course  this 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF  PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  103 

discussion  will  be  one-sided  too.  There  is  no  intention  of 
presenting  a  rounded  picture  of  the  moral  and  religious  life 
of  primitive  Christianity.  We  shall  simply  try  to  do  justice 
to  the  force  of  the  social  impetus  quivering  in  it. 

« 

The  hope  of  the  immediate  return  of  Christ  dominated  the  The  hope  of 
life  of  primitive  Christianity.  Its  missionary  zeal,  its  moral  oAheTooi. 
energy,  its  theological  conceptions  and  its  outlook  on  the 
world,  the  interests  it  cherished  and  the  interests  it  repudiated, 
can  all  be  understood  only  under  the  high  atmospheric  press- 
ure of  that  expectation.  This  great  culminating  event  was 
believed  to  be  very  near.  Paul,  too,  believed  that.  It  is  often 
asserted  that  he  modified  his  expectations  as  time  went  on. 
It  would  be  strange  if  he  did  not,  but  there  is  no  change 
traceable  in  his  thought  on  this  point  sufficient  to  modify  his 
conception  of  the  historic  mission  of  Christianity.  The 
possibility  that  he  personally  might  depart  before  the  Lord 
returned,  deepened  into  probability  and  then  into  certainty; 
but  it  was  always  a  question  of  years  and  decades  with  Paul, 
and  never  of  centuries. 

The  return  of  the  Lord  meant  the  inauguration  of  the  v^ 
kingdom  of  God.  What  the  prophets  had  foretold,  what  the 
people  had  longed  for,  and  what  John  the  Baptist  had  pro- 
claimed as  close  at  hand,  would  come  to  pass  when  Jesus 
returned  from  heaven  to  reign.  He  had  not  achieved  his 
real  mission  during  his  earthly  life;  the  opposition  of  the 
rulers  had  frustrated  that ;  it  had  been  God 's  will  so.  But  he 
was  still  the  Messiah  of  Israel;  the  national  salvation  was 
bound  to  come ;  the  kingdom  would  yet  be  restored  to  Israel. 
In  a  very  short  time  he  would  descend  from  heaven  and  then 
all  their  hopes  would  be  fulfilled  in  one  glorious  and  divine 


I04  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

act  of  consummation.  Their  preaching  was  with  a  view  to 
that  event.  They  sought  to  do  for  his  second  coming  what 
John  the  Baptist  had  sought  to  do  for  his  first  coming :  to 
proclaim  repentance  to  the  people  and  to  gather  a  holy  rem- 
nant. The  Christian  hope  of  the  Parousia  was  the  Jewish 
hope  of  the  Messianic  kingdom,  except  that  the  person  of 
the  Messiah  had  gained  wonderfully  in  concreteness  and 
attractiveness,  and  the  hope  had  become  far  more  vivid  and 
intense.  The  coming  Messiah  was  the  Master  whom  they 
knew  and  loved.  He  had  ascended  on  high  to  receive  the 
kingdom  from  his  Father,  and  soon  they  would  see  him 
again,  perhaps  to-morrow  or  the  day  after. 

Ideas  could  well  differ  as  to  what  the  kingdom  implied  and 
the  return  of  Christ  would  usher  in.  Some  would  place  the 
emphasis  on  the  spiritual  blessings,  others  on  the  social  justice 
and  emancipation  that  would  be  involved  in  the  perfect  reign 
of  God.  It  was  an  ideal,  and  a  very  capacious  and  elastic 
ideal.  The  early  Christians  were  no  more  unanimous  about 
their  eschatology  than  the  Jews  had  been,  and  than  we  are 
to-day. 

Paul  expected  an  immediate  spiritualization  of  the  entire 
Cosmos.^  The  dead  would  be  raised  in  a  spiritual  body ;  the 
living  would  be  transformed  into  the  same  kind  of  body; 
for  flesh  and  blood  in  the  nature  of  things  could  not  share  in 
that  spiritual  kingdom.  Death  would  cease.  Nature  would 
be  glorified,  and  the  long  travail  of  all  creation  would  end 
when  the  children  of  God  would  be  manifested  in  their 
glory.     In  Paul's  programme  of  the  future  there  is  no  room 

•  See  especially  i  Corinthians  15  and  Romans  8. 18-25.  For  a  summary 
of  Paul's  eschatology  see  Weiss,  "Biblical  Theology  of  the  New  Testament," 
Chap.  X. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIAOTTY         I05 

for  a  millennium  of  happiness  on  this  present  earth.  Only 
the  dogmatic  theory  that  all  Scripture  writers  must  hold  the 
same  views  can  wedge  the  millennium  into  Paul's  scheme 
of  the  coming  events.  His  outlook  is  almost  devoid  of 
social  elements.  To  him  the  spirit  was  all.  This  material  -/ 
world  could  be  saved  only  by  ceasing  to  exist.  ^ 

But  there  were  others  to  whom  the  life  in  the  spirit  was 
not  so  intense  and  experimental  a  reality  as  to  Paul.  They 
clung  more  lovingly  to  this  old  earth  and  to  the  human 
intercourse  which  made  their  happiness.  The  material  world 
would,  of  course,  end  some  day,  but  first  there  would  be  a 
really  good  life  on  earth.  When  Satan  and  his  hosts  were 
chained  and  imprisoned,  and  Christ  and  his  saints  reigned 
instead,  then  injustice  and  oppression  would  cease  at  last. 
Nature  would  be  free  from  the  stunting  power  of  sin  and  the 
splendid  fertility  of  paradise  before  the  fall  would  return.^ 
Death  would  come  late  and  gently.  If  any  one  had  suffered 
death  for  the  testimony  of  Jesus,  that  would  not  deprive  him 
of  his  share  in  that  happy  time ;  he  would  come  to  life  and 
be  invulnerable  to  death  till  the  thousand  years  were  over. 
At  the  end  of  that  time  there  would  be  a  last  rallying  of  the 
powers  of  evil,  a  final  spasm  of  judgment,  and  then  this  earth 
would  pass  away. 

This  is  the  type  of  the  Christian  hope  expressed  in  the 
Apocalypse  of  John.  The  twentieth  chapter  describes  this 
intermediate  stage  of  salvation  before  the  new  heavens  and 
the  new  earth  appear  in  the  twenty-first  chapter.     And  even 

'  See  the  gorgeous  imaginings  of  Papias,  a  man  of  the  second  generation 
of  Christians,  quoted  by  Irenaeus,  "Heresies,"  Bk.  V,  Chap,  ^z,  3-4.  See 
"Ante-Nicene  Fathers,"  I,  562-563.  Papias  was  so  sure  that  this  was  part 
and  parcel  of  Christianity  that  he  claimed  this  as  a  sajing  of  Jesus. 


Io6  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

that  new  earth  is  only  a  glorified  old  earth,  with  a  shining 
city  and  ever  bearing  fruit  trees  and  a  crystal  river  and 
nations  that  pass  in  and  out  through  its  gates. 

The  eschatology  of  the  Apocalypse  was  the  orthodox 
eschatology  of  primitive  Christianity.  Most  of  the  writers 
of  the  post-apostolic  age  express  or  indorse  it.  It  was  opposed 
on  principle  by  the  Gnostic  teachers  and  by  some  of  the 
Greek  Church  fathers;  for  them  salvation  consisted  in  the 
emancipation  of  the  spirit  from  the  deadly  prison-house  of 
matter,  and  they  could  not  admit  a  glorification  of  the  ma- 
terial world  in  millennial  splendor.  Gradually  as  the  years 
rolled  on  and  the  Lord  failed  to  come,  this  hope  grew  fainter. 
Montanism  in  the  second  half  of  the  second  century  sought 
to  revive  it  by  strenuous  insistence  on  it,  but  only  brought  it 
into  discredit.  When  the  Empire  accepted  Christianity  as 
the  State  religion,  and  the  peace  and  power  which,  under  the 
pressure  of  persecution,  had  seemed  possible  only  through 
the  direct  intervention  of  God,  had  come  in  other  ways,  the 
millennial  hope  was  practically  abandoned  by  the  leaders  of 
the  Church.  They  had  their  millennium.  Eusebius  pleased 
the  courtiers  of  Constantine  by  suggesting  that  perhaps  the 
marble  and  gold  of  the  Church  ordered  by  Constantine  over 
the  Saviour's  tomb  was  the  new  Jerusalem.^  The  common 
people  long  clung  to  the  millennial  hope ;  they  were  still  dis- 
inherited and  longed  for  their  inheritance. 

Now,  the  millennial  hope  is  the  social  hope  of  Christianity. 
There  are  two  personalities  to  which  religion  holds  out  a  hope 
of  salvation:  the  little  personahty  of  man,  and  the  great 
collective  personality  of  mankind.  To  the  individual,  Chris- 
tianity offers  victory  over  sin  and  death,  and  the  consum- 

*  Eusebius,  "  Life  of  Constantine,"  Chap.  32. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  I07 

mation  of  all  good  in  the  life  to  come.  To  mankind  it  offers 
a  perfect  social  life,  victory  over  all  the  evil  that  wounds  and 
mars  human  intercourse  and  satisfaction  for  the  hunger  and 
thirst  after  justice,  equality,  and  love.  One  or  the  other  of 
these  two  may  be  emphasized  in  the  religious  life  of  an  in- 
dividual or  a  nation.  Ancient  Israel  believed  intensely  in  the 
divine  consummation  for  the  community;  the  hope  of  a 
future  life  for  the  individual  had  very  little  influence  in 
Jewish  religious  life  before  the  Exile.  On  the  other  hand, 
in  the  Greek  world  of  the  first  Christian  centuries  the  longing 
for  eternal  life  was  exceedingly  strong,  and  the  hope  for  any 
collective  salvation  almost  non-existent.  In  the  synoptic 
teaching  of  Jesus  all  turns  on  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  the 
life  hereafter  is  rarely  referred  to;  in  the  Gospel  of  John 
"eternal  Hfe"  is  the  central  word  and  the  "kingdom  of 
God"  scarcely  occurs.  Many  men  to-day  longed  for  heaven 
when  they  were  young,  and  the  idea  of  a  salvation  for  society 
never  occurred  to  them;  now  they  are  almost  indifferent 
whether  they  personally  will  survive  death  or  not ;  but  they 
would  gladly  give  their  life  if  it  could  help  forward  the  sal- 
vation of  society.  A  perfect  religious  hope  must  include 
both :  eternal  life  for  the  individual,  the  kingdom  of  God  for 
humanity. 

In  early  Christianity  we  see  a  gradual  change  of  emphasis 
from  the  one  hope  to  the  other.  From  its  Hebrew  origin  it 
brought  the  social  hope;  from  its  Greek  environment  it 
accepted  the  intensification  of  the  individual  hope.  The 
former  waned  as  primitive  Christianity  disappeared;  the 
latter  waxed  as  Catholic  Christianity  developed.  Each  hope 
w'as  deeply  and  organically  connected  with  all  the  other 
features  of  worship  and  church  life  characteristic  of  primitive 


lo8  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Christianity  on  the  one  hand  and  CathoHc  Christianity  on 
the  other.  But  in  so  far  as  Christianity  retained  the  first 
impact  coming  from  Jesus  and  the  Baptist  and  the  prophets 
of  Israel,  its  hope  was  predominantly  the  social  hope. 

The  millennium  was  the  early  Christian  Utopia.  It  oc- 
cupied the  same  place  in  the  imagination  and  hope  of  the 
first  generations  of  Christians  which  the  cooperative  common- 
wealth occupies  in  the  fancies  of  modern  socialists.  The 
"woes"  which  always  preceded  the  inauguration  of  the  golden 
age  corresponded  to  that  forcible  clash  of  the  contending 
interests  which  is  expected  as  inevitable  in  the  coming  tran- 
sition of  power  from  the  possessing  classes  to  the  proletariat. 
It  is  true,  all  hope  was  put  in  the  intervention  of  God  and 
none  at  all  in  economic  development  or  the  forcible  or  politi- 
cal action  of  Christians.  But  their  hope  was  a  revolutionary 
hope,  even  though  the  revolutionists  were  as  passive  as  sheep 
led  to  the  slaughter  and  as  meek  as  their  Master.  They 
hoped  for  a  change  complete  and  thorough;  for  an  over- 
turning swift  and  catastrophic;  for  an  absolute  transition  of 
power  from  those  who  now  rule  to  those  who  now  suffer  and 
are  oppressed.     What  else  is  a  revolution  ? 

The  entire  complexion  of  this  hope  had  been  inherited 
from  Judaism.  The  general  framework  of  the  successive 
eras,  the  woes,  the  angelic  hosts,  the  mystic  arithmetic  of 
sevens  and  tens,  were  common  to  Jewish  and  Christian 
apocalypticism.  With  slight  changes  Christians  could  adapt 
and  Christianize  Jewish  apocalyptic  writings,  and  they  did  so.^ 

One  most  important  point  in  which  the  Jewish  attitude  was 

•  See  Shailer  Mathews,  "The  Messianic  Hope  in  the  New  Testament"; 
Schiirer,  "  The  Jewish  People  in  the  Time  of  Jesus  Christ,"  §  29  and  §  32,  V. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY  lOQ 

copied  by  some  Christians  was  the  hostility  to  Rome.  The 
oppressed  and  tortured  spirit  of  post-exilic  Judaism  had  turned 
in  fierce  hatred  against  the  nations  that  oppressed  Israel. 
Rome  was  the  last  and  most  terrible  of  them  all.  They  were 
all  but  agents  of  great  demon  powers  who  hated  Israel  and 
thwarted  its  God.  When  the  hurricane  of  God's  judgment 
should  come  at  last,  it  would  mean  deliverance  to  Israel,  but 
necessarily  it  would  mean  also  vengeance  and  overthrow  for 
Rome. 

This  attitude  toward  the  dominant  political  power  was 
readily  imported  into  Christian  thought  with  the  apocalyptic 
literature  which  embodied  it.  Jews  who  became  Christians 
could  hardly  help  retaining  that  philosophy  of  contemporary 
history.  Was  not  Rome  built  up  by  the  aid  of  its  gods? 
And  what  were  its  gods  but  the  demons  whom  Christ  was  to 
overthrow  and  strip  of  their  power?  As  surely  as  the  true 
God  was  in  irreconcilable  conflict  with  the  demon  powers  of 
idolatry,  so  surely  would  there  have  to  be  a  death-struggle 
with  the  Empire  before  the  kingdom  of  Christ  could  be  set 
up.  In  the  Apocalypse  of  John,  before  the  shout  of  the 
multitude  could  proclaim  the  final  "Hallelujah  !  for  the  Lord 
our  God  the  Omnipotent  reigneth !"  the  other  shout  had  to 
go  up,   "Fallen,  fallen  is  Babylon  the  great !"  ^ 

In  the  Middle  Ages  the  whisper  began  to  go  abroad  that 
the  scarlet  woman  that  rides  on  the  beast,  the  great  city 
seated  on  the  seven  hills,  was  papal  Rome.  That  interpre- 
tation has  been  so  useful  in  the  long  battle  of  Protestantism 
with  Romanism  that  it  has  acquired  a  kind  of  canonical 
authority,  so  that  to  many  readers  of  the  Bible  it  seems  a 
self-evident  matter  that  the  Apocalypse  prophesies  the  anti- 

*  Apoc.  19.  6  and  18.  2. 


no  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

Christian  power  of  papal  Rome.  But  neither  the  writer  nor 
the  early  readers  of  the  book  had  the  faintest  conception  of 
the  papacy  or  its  far-off  corruption.  Not  even  the  tiniest 
germ  of  that  institution  was  in  existence  when  the  book  was 
written.  To  any  contemporary  reader  the  great  city  en- 
throned on  the  seven  hills,  ruling  over  all  nations,  the  luxurious 
market  for  all  the  merchants  of  silver  and  pearls  and  purple 
and  silk  and  scarlet,  could  mean  only  one  thing :  the  capital 
of  the  Empire.  Her  fall  and  ruin  meant  the  overthrow  of  the 
Empire.^  But  surely  the  shout  of  triumph  hailing  that  event 
was  not  expressive  either  of  political  indifference  nor  political 
loyalty. 

Not  all  Christians  shared  this  attitude  of  hostility  to  the 
State.  Paul  certainly  did  not  regard  the  Empire  as  Satanic 
in  character,  but  as  a  divine  instrument  of  order  and  justice,^ 
a  power  holding  the  anti-Christian  malignity  in  check.^  But 
Paul  wrote  his  commendation  of  Roman  justice  during  the 
early  and  happy  years  of  Nero's  reign,  when  that  gifted  and 
impressionable  mind  was  still  under  the  influence  of  Seneca. 
Up  to  that  time  the  persecution  of  the  Christians  had  all 
proceeded  from  the  hatred  of  the  Jews,  and  the  strong  arm 
of  the  Roman  government  had  often  served  to  protect  the 
Christians  from  the  influential  malice  of  the  Jews.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Apocalypse  was  written  when  the  iron  hand 
of  Rome  had  turned  against  the  Christians  as  such  under  Nero 
and  perhaps  under  Domitian.^  All  the  world  had  listened 
aghast  to  the  news  of  the  burning  of  great  Rome.  But  to 
the  Christian  communities  the  most  significant  fact  was  the 
death-moan  of  their  brethren  that  followed.     The  glare  of 

^  Apoc.  17-19.  ^Romans  13.  1-7.  ^2  Thessalonians  2.  1-12. 

*  Under  Nero  A.D.  64 ;  under  Domitian  a.d.  95  or  96.  , 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  III 

burning  Rome  and  the  blood  of  the  Christian  martyrs  com- 
bine in  the  lurid  colors  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  chap- 
ters of  the  Apocalypse.  The  prayer  for  vengeance  against 
Rome  was  the  answer  in  some  Christian  minds  to  the  begin- 
nings of  persecution  by  Rome.  It  was  not  Christian,  but  it 
was  very  human.^ 

The  hope  of  Christ's  return  dominated  the  thoughts  of 
primitive  Christianity.  Christ's  return  was  the  inauguration 
of  the  kingdom  of  God,  The  kingdom  of  God  was  the  hope 
of  social  perfection.  The  reign  of  Christ  involved  the  over- 
throw of  the  present  world-powers.  Thus  the  millennial 
hope  was  necessarily  a  political  hope  and  in  antagonism  to 
the  existing  political  situation.  As  soon  as  the  Roman  Em- 
pire took  an  attitude  of  active  hostility  toward  the  followers 
of  Christ,  some  at  least  of  them  took  an  attitude  of  passive 
hostility  toward  the  Empire.  This  was  neither  wise  nor 
Christian,  but  in  estimating  the  social  impetus  of  primitive 
Christianity  we  cannot  overlook  these  revolutionary  tenden- 
cies. If  the  broadening  current  of  the  Christian  movement 
had  such  sucking  whirlpools  on  one  of  its  edges,  it  helps  us 
to  estimate  the  swiftness  and  force  of  the  entire  stream. 


The  apocalyptic  hope  expressed  a  tremendous  sense  of  The  politi- 

C3.1  coH" 

political  destiny.     All  the  world  was  to  be  made  over  and  sciousness 
the  Christians  placed  in  the  centre  of  things.     The  reins  of  °/  Chris- 
power  were  to  be  torn  from  the  hands  of  the  mighty  and 
given  to  the  followers  of  Jesus.     The  history  of  the  world 

*  There  are  historical  scholars  who  are  so  impressed  by  the  latent  hostility 
of  the  Christians  to  Rome  that  they  incline  to  think  some  of  them  may  have 
been  guilty  of  setting  Rome  on  fire,  as  was  charged  at  the  time.  Cf .  Tadtus, 
"  Annales,"  XV,  44. 


112  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

converged  upon  them.  They  had  this  proud  conscious- 
ness of  an  exalted  future,  not  because  of  their  own  worth, 
but  because  they  beheved  in  the  worth  of  Jesus  Christ 
and  hoped  to  be  lifted  to  power  with  him  as  his  faithful 
adherents. 

At  the  core  this  hope  was  sound,  but  we  cannot  help  feel- 
ing that  the  form  of  the  hope  was  largely  visionary.  It  cer- 
tainly did  not  come  true.  As  we  pointed  out  in  an  earlier 
chapter,^  the  apocalyptic  hope  was  a  debased  form  of  the 
prophetic  hope,  developed  at  a  time  when  the  Jewish  people 
were  without  political  power  or  experience.  The  whole 
scheme  of  the  future  in  the  apocalyptic  literature  is  artificial, 
unreal,  unhistorical,  and  mechanical.  Jesus  turned  away 
from  it  and  emphasized  the  law  of  organic  development,^  but 
his  followers  did  not  generally  rise  to  that  higher  view. 

Yet  we  do  find  in  early  Christianity  a  different  type  of 
thought  which  had  the  same  high  sense  of  an  historical  mis- 
sion, but  which  combined  it  with  a  saner  and  more  philo- 
sophical outlook  on  the  world.^  It  was  evolutionary,  while 
apocalypticism  was  catastrophic. 

For  those  who  believed  in  Christ  his  coming  marked  the 
fundamental  epoch  in  human  history.  All  that  had  gone 
before  was  but  preparation.  In  Paul's  philosophy  it  was  a 
basal  thought  that  Christ  was  the  second  Adam,  the  source 
and  starting-point  of  a  new  and  spiritual  humanity,  the  origi- 
nator of  a  new  type  of  man.*  The  Christian  Gnostics,  who 
were  the  Christian  evolutionary  philosophers  of  that  age, 

*  PP-  34-36-  ^  pp.  59-60. 

'  In  the  following  sections  I  am  greatly  indebted  to  Harnack,  "  Expansion 
of  Christianity,"  Bk.  II,  Chap.  VI. 

*  I  Corinthians  15.  44-49;  Romans  5.  12-21. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIAOTTY         II3 

went  even  farther  and  made  the  revelation  of  Christ  the 
central  cosmic  event/ 

And  it  was  not  simply  a  new  kind  of  individual  that  was 
being  produced  within  the  sphere  of  Christ's  influence,  but  a 
new  people,  a  novel  social  unity,  "You  are  a  chosen  race,  a 
kingly  priesthood,  a  consecrated  nation,  God's  own  people" 
—  four  terms  in  which  organic  solidarity  is  expressed  with 
reiterated  emphasis.^  In  their  churches  Christians  had  a 
visible  demonstration  of  the  fact  that  the  old  social  unities 
were  being  broken  up  to  build  a  new  unity.  The  old  dividing 
lines  of  Jew  and  Gentile,  of  civilized  Greek  and  raw  bar- 
barian, of  slave  and  freeman,  of  man  and  woman,  were 
fading  out ;  the  only  line  that  was  left  to  their  vision  was  the 
line  that  separated  Christians  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  and 
all  who  were  in  Christ  were  one  new  being.' 

This  new  race  had  a  great  past  and  a  greater  future.  Reach- 
ing backward  it  claimed  all  the  venerable  history  of  Israel  for 
its  own.  The  patriarchs  and  prophets,  the  types,  the  promises, 
the  whole  Scriptures,  were  not  Jewish,  but  Christian.  The 
Christians  were  the  real  Israel.  By  one  daring  act  of  ex- 
propriation the  Jewish  people  were  thrust  out  of  their  historic 
heritage  and  the  Christian  Church  sat  within  the  tents  of 
Shem.  Christianity  was  the  original  religion  restored  and 
completed.  It  was  as  old  as  mankind.  By  this  appropria- 
tion of  Hebrew  history  the  Christians,  looking  backward, 
gained  a  profound  sense  of  historic  dignity  and  importance. 
They  also  gained  a  sense  of  being  a  corporate  social  body,  a 
political  entity.     Looking  forward,  this  new  people  realized 

*  See,  for  instance,  Windelband,  "History  of  Philosophy,"  §  21. 
'  I  Peter  2.  9:  yivos,  lepdrevfia,  (dvos,  Xo6j. 
'  Galatians  3.  26-28;  Colossians  3.  5-11. 
I 


114  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  SOCIAL  CRISIS 

that  it  was  the  people  of  destiny.  As  surely  as  Christ  was 
destined  to  reign,  so  surely  were  the  Christians  the  coming 
people.  They  were  not  only  to  be  superior  to  the  others, 
but  to  absorb  all  others. 

When  Christianity  came  on  the  stage  of  history,  there  were 
two  distinct  types  in  possession,  the  Gentiles  and  the  Jews, 
with  a  deep  and  permanent  cleavage  between  the  two.  Chris- 
tianity added  a  third  genus,  and  Christians  were  profoundly 
convinced  that  they  were  to  assimilate  and  transform  all 
others  into  a  higher  unity.  The  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  is 
a  tract  reflecting  on  this  aspect  of  the  mission  of  Christ. 
Romans  9-11  is  a  philosophy  of  history,  forecasting  the 
method  by  which  this  process  of  absorption  and  solidifica- 
tion was  to  come  about.  There  is  a  prophetic  grandeur  of 
vision  in  this  large  international  outlook  of  the  early  Chris- 
tians. The  evolution  of  religion  has  always  been  intimately 
connected  with  the  evolution  of  social  organization.  When 
tribes  were  amalgamated  into  a  nation,  tribal  religions  passed 
into  a  national  religion.^  In  the  Roman  Empire  nations  were 
now  being  fused  into  a  still  larger  social  unity.  The  old 
national  religions  were  incapable  of  serving  as  the  spiritual 
support  for  this  vaster  social  body.  There  was  a  crying  need 
for  an  international  and  purely  human  religion.  Christianity, 
as  we  now  know,  was  destined  to  fulfil  this  function,  and 
these  early  Christian  thinkers  had  a  prophetic  premonition 
of  this  destiny.  They  often  dwelt  on  the  fact  that  Christianity 
had  been  bom  simultaneously  with  the  Empire  under  Augus- 
tus.^   The  universal  State  and  the  universal  religion  were 

*  See  Menzies,  "  History  of  Religion,"  Chap.  VI. 

'Luke  2.  i;  Melito,  quoted  in  Eusebius,  "Church  History,"  IV,  26, 
7-11. 


m 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY  II 5 


twins  by  birth.  They  ought,  therefore,  to  be  in  helpful  rela- 
tions to  each  other  in  accordance  with  the  manifest  purpose 
of  God.  The  Empire  should  cease  to  persecute  the  Church. 
The  Church  could  be  the  best  ally  of  the  State  in  creating 
civil  peace,  because  Christians  had  the  highest  morality,  and 
because  they  alone  had  power  over  the  demons  who  menaced 
the  security  of  the  Empire.*  As  the  soul  holds  the  body 
together,  so  Christians  hold  the  world  together.^  They  exert 
a  conservative  and  unifying  influence.  This  conception  of 
Christianity  as  a  penetrating,  renewing,  and  unifying  power, 
destined  to  control  the  future  of  the  world,  was  just  as  full 
of  triumphant  hopefulness  as  the  apocalyptic  hope,  but 
allowed  of  a  quiet  process  of  historic  growth.  It  did  not 
regard  the  existing  State  as  Satanic  and  evil,  yet  had  full 
room  for  moral  criticism  of  existing  conditions  and  the  deter- 
mination to  contribute  to  a  thorough  moral  change. 

The  apocalyptic  hope  was  probably  the  dominant  Chris- 
tian conception  of  history  in  the  very  first  generations.  This 
other  view  gained  power  as  time  passed,  as  the  number  and 
influence  of  Christians  increased,  and  as  men  of  larger  mental 
reach  and  higher  education  grew  up  in  the  Church.  The 
fact  that  religious  convictions  are  the  living  force  in  these 
theories  must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  they  contain  a 
consciousness  of  social  solidarity,  of  social  power,  and  of 
a  social  mission.  This  satisfaction  for  the  dawning  sense  of  a 
vaster  human  unity  probably  lent  greater  force  than  we  now 
imagine  to  the  missionary  appeal  of  Christians  among  the 
lower  and  middle  classes. 

W    To-day  we  have  a  similar  process  of  international  amalga- 
mation very  similar  to  that  of  the  early  Christian  centuries. 

'  Justin,  "  Apology,"  I,  Chap.  12,    *  "  Epistle  to  Diognetus,"  Chap.  VI. 


Il6  CHRISTIANITY  AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

At  that  time  a  new  and  common  civilization  was  growing  up 
around  the  Mediterranean  Sea ;  to-day  it  is  growing  up  around 
all  the  oceans.  It  is  significant  that  the  prophets  of  the 
modern  social  movement  are  also  the  prophets  of  a  new 
V  internationalism,  which  aims  to  supplant  the  narrow  patri- 
otisms and  interests  of  a  by-gone  stage  of  human  develop- 
ment by  the  wider  enthusiasms  and  outlooks  of  a  vaster  human 
brotherhood.  There  is  a  profound  similarity  between  the 
consciousness  and  the  aims  of  early  Christianity  and  of 
modem  social  thought,  wherever  it  has  ethical  and  religious 
impetus  in  it. 

The  society-  All  that  has  been  said  so  far  bears  intimately  on  the  social 
force  o^  contents  of  early  Christianity,  but  it  deals  with  its  ideas  and 
primitive  theories  rather  than  its  actual  social  achievements.  But 
primitive  Christianity  was  not  in  the  least  academic.  Its 
distinctive  quality  was  the  passionate  moral  energy  with 
which  it  pressed  for  action.  Jesus  had  put  a  new  spirit  into 
his  followers.  That  spirit  spread  with  a  noble  contagion  and 
sought  expression  and  realization  in  a  new  society.  The  old 
social  life  was  stubbornly  hostile  to  it  at  some  points  and  un- 
responsive at  others.  Therefore  a  new  social  life  had  to  be 
created  to  be  the  fit  environment  for  the  new  spirit.  Hence, 
wherever  Christianity  came,  we  see  a  new  society  nucleating. 
To  create  a  new  type  of  social  organization  is  always  a 
feat  of  strength.  The  higher  the  ideas  and  aspirations  are 
which  the  organization  embodies,  the  greater  is  the  force 
needed  to  create  and  maintain  the  organization.  Water 
seeks  its  level;  so  does  man.  It  is  not  hard  for  a  swimmer 
to  keep  his  face  above  water ;  it  is  very  hard  to  lift  his  shoul- 
ders above  the  water.     The  Christians  at  Corinth  were  Corin- 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY  II 7 

thians  before  they  were  Christians.  Their  memories  and 
habits,  their  imaginations  and  appetites,  were  in  league  with 
the  common  hfe  about  them.  They  hved  in  the  same  houses 
and  workshops  and  baths  with  their  fellows.  Yet  Chris- 
tianity called  on  them  to  cut  loose  from  their  social  environ- 
ment and  to  rise  to  an  ethical  standard  which  they  had 
neither  recognized  in  theory  nor  practised  in  life.  It  bade 
them  cease  from  that  sexual  indulgence  which  the  Greeks 
regarded  as  a  simple,  pleasurable  satisfaction  of  a  natural 
appetite.  It  called  for  unselfishness  and  honesty  in  money 
affairs,  and  Greeks  were  not  famous  for  either.  It  demanded 
peaceableness  and  gentleness  of  intercourse,  whereas  the 
Greek  took  to  factious  debating  as  a  duck  to  the  water. 

The  results  achieved  were  by  no  means  ideal.  But  the 
religious  power  of  the  new  faith  did  succeed  in  gathering 
these  people  into  organizations  where  such  moral  teachings 
were  urged  with  immense  determination,  and  where  the  irre- 
sistible force  of  public  opinion  exerted  its  disciplinary  power 
on  all  who  manifestly  contradicted  in  their  living  the  ideals 
accepted  in  their  faith.  The  first  generation  of  Christian 
teachers  had  to  make  a  strenuous  fight  against  the  grosser 
forms  of  sexual  evil  within  the  churches.  In  the  following 
generations  we  hear  less  about  them  in  exhortations  addressed 
to  Christians  and  more  in  writings  addressed  to  the  general 
public.  Probably  the  moral  standard  had  been  effectively 
raised  within  the  Christian  community,  and  these  outstand- 
ing vices  had  been  practically  left  behind,  much  as  intoxica- 
tion and  profanity  in  the  American  churches.  A  body  of 
seasoned  Christians  had  grown  up  under  life-long  Christian 
influences,  and  their  combined  influence  was  more  steady 
and  powerful  than  the  occasional  warnings  of  the  early 


Il8  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

apostles/  To  curb  the  strongest  and  therefore  the  most 
destructive  physical  desire;  to  put  an  edge  on  conscience  in 
regard  to  honesty  and  generosity  in  the  use  of  property;  to 
soften  the  hateful  and  factious  spirit  by  a  lovable  gentleness 
—  even  a  slight  success  in  these  directions  would  be  an  in- 
valuable contribution  to  social  life.  But  to  draw  men  out  of 
their  social  environment  into  an  organization  expressly  dedi- 
cated to  the  achievement  of  this  high  moral  standard,  is  a 
wonderful  testimony  to  the  society-making  power  of  the  new 
religion. 

Most  social  organizations  follow  natural  lines  of  cleavage. 
Blood  kinship,  tribal  sympathies,  neighborhood,  financial 
profit,  social  protection  or  advancement  —  these  are  some 
of  the  forces  that  bind  men  together.  Christianity  cut  across 
these  natural  and  conventional  lines.  It  tore  down  the  exist- 
ing barriers  with  irresistible  force  and  brought  men  together 
by  a  new  principle  of  stratifi^cation.  Jews  were  wrenched 
loose  from  the  firm  hold  of  their  race  and  religion;  Greeks 
from  their  culture  and  pleasures;  and  both  joined  on  a 
footing  of  equality.  Spiritual  affinity  triumphed  over  the 
strongest  bonds  that  hold  men  together.  The  call  of  Jesus 
to  give  up  home  and  property,  reputation  and  life,  for  his 
sake,  was  treasured  in  the  collection  of  his  sayings  because 
it  corresponded  to  the  actual  experience  of  so  many  of  his 
followers.  The  society-making  force  can  be  measured  by 
the  obstacles  it  had  to  overcome. 

It  was  the  Christian  policy  to  minimize  the  contact  with 
the  unhallowed  life  outside.  It  was  this  withdrawal  which 
evoked  so  much  hatred  and  resentment  and  brought  on  the 
Christians,  as  on  the  Jews,  the  charge  of  an  odium  generis 

*  Dobschiitz,  "  Christian  Life  in  the  Primitive  Church,"  pp.  186-187. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY         II 9 

humani,  a  general  hatred  for  human  kind.  But  within  the 
charmed  circle  of  the  Christian  name  the  love  was  all  the 
more  intense.  Its  strength  was  novel,  inexplicable,  and 
awakened  sinister  suspicions  in  outsiders.  But  it  was  not 
common  crime,  as  the  heathen  suspected,  but  the  common 
experience  of  the  highest  spiritual  and  ideal  good  which  un- 
fettered such  new  powers  of  human  fellowship.  Faith  in  a 
common  Father  made  men  brothers.  When  men  had  vowed 
allegiance  to  the  same  Master,  had  felt  the  inward  compul- 
sion of  the  same  divine  Spirit,  and  looked  forward  intently  to 
the  same  great  consummation  in  the  return  of  Christ,  all  the 
old  distinctions  were  puerile  and  outworn,  and  they  locked 
hands  as  Christian  brothers.  The  natural  desire  for  social 
intelligence  and  intercourse,  the  inborn  craving  of  man  for 
man,  was  spiritualized,  ennobled,  and  intensified  by  being 
put  on  such  a  basis.  The  fact  that  such  a  society  was  possi- 
ble at  all  is  splendid  testimony  to  the  good  in  man.  The 
strength  of  its  cohesion  is  prophetic  of  what  human  society 
may  come  to  be  when  its  higher  dormant  faculties  are  called 
into  action. 

The  churches  of  the  first  generation  were  not  churches  in 
our  sense  of  the  word.  They  were  not  communities  for  the 
performance  of  a  common  worship,  so  much  as  communities 
with  a  common  life.  They  were  social  communities  with  a 
religious  basis,  A  common  religious  experience  and  hope 
brought  them  together,  but  the  community  of  life  extended 
to  far  more  than  that.  They  prayed  together,  but  they  also 
ate  together.  They  had  no  church  buildings,  but  met  in  the 
homes  of  their  members.  That  in  itself  was  an  influence 
against  ecclesiasticism  and  for  social  intimacy.  They  had  a 
rudimentary  organization,  as  every  human  society  is  sure  to 


I20 


CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 


have,  but  they  had  no  official  clergy  distinct  from  the  laity. 
They  were  democratic  organizations  of  plain  people.  Be- 
cause they  were  separated  from  all  other  society,  they  had  to 
find  nearly  all  their  social  relations,  pleasures,  and  interests 
within  the  Christian  community.  How  far  did  this  sharing 
of  all  life  extend? 


Tlie  so- 
called  com- 
munism at 
Jerusalem. 


The  church  at  Jerusalem  will  occur  to  every  one  as  the 
classical  illustration  of  a  larger  sharing  of  life.  "All  who 
became  Christians  were  together  and  held  all  they  had  for 
the  common  use.  They  sold  their  property  and  goods,  and 
shared  the  proceeds  according  to  their  individual  needs." 
They  met  for  worship  in  the  temple,  and  met  for  their  meals 
in  their  homes.  The  outflow  of  this  close  fellowship  was  a 
simple-hearted  gladness,  so  that  they  could  praise  God  and 
win  the  good-will  of  men.^ 

It  is  amusing  to  note  how  our  popular  expositors  treat 
this  Christian  communism  to-day.  They  approach  it  with 
a  sort  of  deprecatory  admiration.  It  is  so  useful  for  proving 
how  noble  and  loving  Christianity  was,  but  it  is  so  awkward 
if  anybody  should  draw  the  conclusion  that  we  to-day  ought 
to  share  our  property.  They  make  much  of  the  fact  that  we 
have  no  other  instance  of  communism  among  the  other 
churches  of  the  New  Testament,  and  that  even  at  Jerusalem 
the  mother  of  Mark  still  had  a  house  of  her  own  to  live  in. 
They  seem  more  anxious  to  emphasize  that  it  did  not  occur 
twice  than  to  show  that  it  did  occur  once.  But  many  an 
ecclesiastical  body  would  be  happy  if  it  had  as  much  Scrip- 
ture to  quote  for  its  favorite  church  practices,  and  would 
treat  with  scorn  any  suggestion  that  after  all  it  had  "occurred 

»  Acts  2.  43-47.  4-  32-5-  n- 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF   PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  121 

only  once."  As  a  result  of  this  anxiety,  it  is  commonly  as- 
serted that  the  later  poverty  of  the  church  at  Jerusalem  was 
due  to  its  communism.  The  assertion  has  been  made  so 
often  that  it  is  accepted  almost  as  self-evident.  Yet  there  is 
not  the  slightest  statement  in  the  Bible  connecting  the  two 
things ;  it  is  pure  inference.  Luke,  who  is  our  sole  source  of 
information,  has  not  a  breath  of  disapproval.  To  him  it  is 
evidently  a  beautiful  fact,  a  wonderful  demonstration  of  the 
power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  Church.  It  is  hard  to  escape 
the  feeling  that  the  bias  of  Luke  and  of  modem  Christians 
is  somewhat  divergent. 

At  the  outset  the  disciples  at  Jerusalem  simply  continued 
the  life  they  had  lived  with  the  Master.  They  went  on  doing 
as  they  had  done  with  him.  They  had  had  a  common  purse. 
He  had  cared  for  the  wants  of  his  family  like  a  father,  and 
they  acknowledged  that  they  had  never  been  in  want  while 
under  him.^  They  were  now  away  from  their  old  homes 
and  occupations  in  Galilee.  So  they  continued  a  family  life 
among  themselves  and  shared  what  they  had. 

As  their  number  increased,  the  problem  of  providing  for 
the  common  meals  and  for  the  poor  and  sick  became  diffi- 
cult. Those  who  were  better  off,  in  the  glow  of  brotherly 
love  and  religious  self-sacrifice,  and  probably  in  the  expecta- 
tion of  the  speedy  return  of  Christ,  replenished  the  common 
purse  by  larger  offerings.  In  a  few  memorable  cases  they 
even  parted  with  real  estate  for  this  purpose.  It  is  worthy 
of  note  that  Luke  was  able  to  mention  only  a  single  instance 
of  such  generosity  by  name,  and  that  was  by  a  man  of  re- 
markable largeness  of  heart,  Barnabas.^  All  evidence  indi- 
cates that  Luke  was  not  an  eye-witness  of  this  early  life  at 

'  Luke  22.  35.  ^  Acts  4.  36-37. 


122  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Jerusalem.  The  purpose  of  his  book  was  not  to  furnish  an 
impartial  and  critical  account  of  the  beginnings  of  Chris- 
tianity, but  to  give  an  edifying  sketch  of  the  wonderful  prog- 
ress of  the  gospel  from  Jerusalem  to  Rome.  His  tone  is  that 
of  a  modern  pastor  giving  a  centenary  history  of  his  church, 
or  of  a  missionary  describing  the  progress  of  Christianity  in 
a  Karen  tribe.  Writing  at  such  a  distance  and  for  such  a 
purpose  it  is  very  natural  and  right  that  he  should  dip  his 
brush  in  the  liquid  gold  of  enthusiasm  and  say,  "Not  one 
of  them  claimed  anything  of  his  possessions  as  his  own,  but 
all  things  were  common  to  them."  Yet  the  fraternal  fervor 
must  have  been  strong,  for  even  Ananias  and  Sapphira  felt 
that  they  had  to  make  at  least  a  show  of  complete  renun- 
ciation to  measure  up  to  the  standard  set  by  the  Christian 
community. 

But  whatever  the  extent  of  this  generosity  may  have  been, 
it  was  always  generosity,  and  not  communism  in  any  proper 
sense  of  the  word.  No  one  was  required  to  turn  his  property 
into  the  common  fund  on  admission,  as  in  all  communistic 
colonies.  And  above  all  there  was  no  common  economic  pro- 
duction. In  fact,  there  seems  to  be  no  trace  of  communistic 
production  in  ancient  Christian  literature.  The  rudimentary 
communism  of  primitive  tribal  life  was  gone  and  forgotten. 
The  possibility  of  a  higher  communistic  ownership  of  the  in- 
struments of  production  had  not  yet  risen  above  the  horizon  of 
common  thought.  Individual  and  family  production  was  the 
only  kind  commonly  known.  Thus  these  first  Christians  pro- 
duced separately  and  consumed  in  common.  It  was  religious 
and  instinctive  fraternity,  but  not  communism  in  any  strict 
sense.  Wherever  people  meet  closely  on  a  footing  of  equality, 
sharing  is  inevitable.     In  the  family  we  always  hold  most 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF   PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  1 23 

of  our  possessions  for  common  use.  Students  in  dormitory, 
soldiers  on  the  march,  sportsmen  in  camp,  share  freely.  It  is 
impossible  to  have  a  man  sit  by  you  as  your  brother  and  let 
him  go  hungry  while  you  feed.  Therefore  as  a  usual  thing  we 
do  not  let  him  sit  by  us  or  we  deny  that  he  is  our  brother. 
But  whenever  calamity  or  joy  sweeps  away  the  artificial 
barriers,  men  at  once  begin  to  share.  Religion  had  the  same 
effect  in  Jerusalem,  and  often  since. 

The  later  poverty  at  Jerusalem  may  have  been  due  in  part 
to  this  geneK)sity.  If  a  man  turned  in  his  farm  to  be  eaten 
up,  he  raised  the  standard  of  living  of  all  for  a  while,  but 
his  private  capital  was  gone  without  creating  any  capital  for 
common  production.  On  the  other  hand,  the  continued 
poverty  may  well  have  been  due  to  other  causes:  to  the 
general  poverty  of  the  lower  classes  in  Palestine ;  to  persecu- 
tion and  economic  unsettlement ;  to  the  emigration  of  well- 
to-do  and  conspicuous  members;  to  the  separation  of  the 
Galilean  Christians  from  their  accustomed  sources  of  earn- 
ing ;  or  to  the  amount  of  time  devoted  to  religion  and  with- 
drawn from  labor.  It  is  at  least  hasty  to  charge  a  permanent 
situation  to  a  single  cause. 

Thus  the  church  at  Jerusalem  was  not  quite  as  communistic 
as  is  usually  supposed.  On  the  other  hand,  the  other  churches 
were  not  as  completely  devoid  of  communistic  features  as  is 
commonly  assumed. 

The  disciples  at  Jerusalem  had  met  in  their  homes  and  had  The  primi- 
tive 


eaten  in  common.     The  one  act  which  might  be  called  an  churches 
act  of  distinctively  Christian  ritual  at  the  beginning,  the  re-  fraternal 
minder  of  the  Lord's  last  meal  with  the  disciples,  was  per-  ties, 
formed  in  connection  with  these  common  meals,  and  this 


124  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

insured  the  homeliness  and  simplicity  of  the  rite.  These 
common  meals  were  so  essential  a  part  of  the  earliest  church 
life  that  this  custom  was  established  wherever  Christianity 
came.  This  in  itself  is  a  strong  proof  that  the  churches  were 
more  than  organizations  for  worship.  We  know  from  Paul's 
letter  to  the  Corinthians  ^  that  the  Christians  met  in  the 
evening,  the  time  for  the  chief  meal  of  the  day,  and  dined 
together.  Such  common  meals  were  frequent  in  the  Greek 
fraternal  associations,  and  Greeks  could  easily  fall  in  with 
the  custom.  These  love-feasts  did  not  consist' of  eating  a 
wafer  as  a  religious  symbol,  as  is  done  in  some  modem 
churches;  it  was  a  downright  meal  to  which  people  came 
hungry,  so  that  Paul  advised  them  to  get  a  bite  at  home  to 
take  the  edge  off  their  appetites,  if  they  were  too  hungry  to 
wait  for  one  another. 

Now  the  assurance  of  one  square  meal  means  a  great  deal 
to  a  poor  man  physically.  It  means  still  more  to  his  con- 
sciousness of  human  worth  and  his  enjoyment  of  human 
intercourse  to  sit  at  a  social  function  as  the  equal  of  all.  To 
break  bread  in  common  brings  men  close  to  one  another. 
At  Corinth  the  social  differences  had  obtruded  themselves  at 
the  common  meals.  The  well-to-do  had  drifted  together  in  a 
coterie,  had  clubbed  their  well-filled  baskets,  and  were  in 
danger  of  getting  hilarious  together,  while  the  poor  brother 
sat  on  one  side  hungry  and  outside  the  pale  of  social  enjoy- 
ment. Paul  took  this  very  seriously.  It  seemed  to  him  a 
denial  of  the  fundamental  spirit  of  the  churches. 

These  common  meals  persisted  for  centuries,  though 
changed  in  character.  The  ritual  act  of  the  "  Lord's  Supper" 
became  more  ceremonial,  mysterious,  and  awe-inspiring,  and 

*  I  Corinthians  ii.  17-34. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY         12$ 

a  meal  where  people  were  heartily  satisfying  their  physical 
hunger  did  not  seem  the  fit  environment  for  the  mystery  of 
the  eucharist.  Hence  that  part  was  transferred  to  the  morn- 
ing service.  But  the  evening  meal  continued.  As  wealthy 
men  entered  the  churches,  they  often  defrayed  the  expenses 
of  a  meal  and  made  it  an  act  of  charity  to  the  poor.  The 
rich  paid  and  the  poor  ate.  That  was  a  complete  departure 
from  the  democracy  of  the  common  meal  at  the  beginning. 
But  the  persistence  of  the  custom,  even  when  all  the  condi- 
tions had  so  completely  changed,  proves  how  deeply  it  was 
embedded  in  the  traditions  coming  down  from  the  origin  of 
Christianity. 

The  provisions  for  the  common  meal  were  brought  by  each 
family,  as  in  our  basket  picnics.  When  the  Lord's  Supper 
was  transferred  to  the  Sunday  morning  service,  it  still  re- 
mained customary  for  the  people  to  bring  provisions  along, 
and  the  material  for  the  eucharist  was  taken  from  these  offer- 
ings. What  was  left  was  distributed  to  all  who  were  in  need. 
As  time  went  on,  regular  monthly  offerings  of  money  were 
introduced  and  under  the  ascetic  enthusiasm  of  almsgiving, 
large  properties  were  often  turned  over  to  the  churches.  It 
is  significant  that  for  a  long  time  the  churches  did  not  accu- 
mulate property.  If  real  estate  was  given,  it  was  sold  and 
the  proceeds  used  up.  If  there  was  any  special  need,  a  col- 
lection had  to  be  taken  to  meet  it.  In  the  Greek  fraternal 
associations  the  accumulation  of  income-bearing  property 
was  essential.  The  later  Church,  too,  derived  its  chief  income 
from  landed  wealth.  The  primitive  Church  on  principle  was 
without  property.^ 

Moreover,  the  income  of  the  Church  was  wholly  for  those 

'  Sohm,  "  Kirchenrecht,"  I,  71. 


126  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

in  need.  In  modem  church  hfe  the  bulk  of  the  income 
goes  for  the  support  of  the  clergy  and  the  expenses  of  worship, 
and  even  of  the  expenses  for  benevolence  only  a  small  frac- 
tion is  for  charitable  help  of  the  needy.  In  the  primitive 
Church  the  officers  were  not  paid,  unless  they  temporarily 
went  without  earnings  to  serve  the  Church.  In  that  case 
they  were  supported  because  they  were  needy,  and  not  be- 
cause they  were  officers.  As  the  Church  was  ecclesiasticized 
and  clericalized,  an  increasing  clergy  was  needed  to  do  what 
the  people  at  first  had  done  for  themselves.  The  clergy  be- 
came a  separate  and  priestly  class,  for  whom  secular  employ- 
ment was  not  fitting,  and  who  had  to  be  maintained.  An 
ever  increasing  proportion  of  the  income  of  the  Church  was 
devoted  to  the  clergy  and  the  expenses  of  the  ritual.  In  the 
fifth  century  it  was  regarded  as  a  fitting  division  that  one- 
fourth  go  to  the  bishop,  one-fourth  to  the  clergy,  one-fourth 
for  the  maintenance  of  worship,  and  only  one-fourth  to 
the  poor.  Yet  in  theory  the  property  of  the  Church  long 
remained  "the  patrimony  of  the  poor."  This,  too,  was  a 
survival  of  earlier  traditions. 

It  is  possible  to  get  a  very  fair  estimate  of  a  man's  char- 
acter from  the  allotment  of  his  expenditures.  The  same  is 
true  of  a  Church.  If  its  income  is  largely  devoted  to  appli- 
ances of  aesthetic  beauty,  we  may  be  sure  that  its  heart  is  in 
its  ritual.  If  the  primitive  churches  could  do  with  little  in- 
come spontaneously  offered,  we  may  be  sure  that  they  were 
democratic  bodies  in  which  the  people  themselves  did  the 
work.  If  the  income  was  wholly  devoted  to  the  help  of  the 
needy,  we  may  be  sure  that  fraternal  helpfulness  was  essen- 
tial to  their  church  life. 

This  line  of  argument  is  confirmed  by  the  history  of  the 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  12  7 

organization  of  the  primitive  churches.^  We  are  apt  to  trans- 
fer our  own  conditions  back  to  the  first  century  and  to  assume 
that  the  elders  and  bishops,  like  the  modern  pastor,  existed 
primarily  for  teaching  and  preaching.  But  religious  utter- 
ance was  the  common  right  of  all  Christians.  Whoever  had 
the  spiritual  gift  for  it,  could  exercise  it.  It  was  not  a  duty 
attached  to  a  church  office.  The  officers  of  the  primitive 
churches  were  executive  and  administrative  officers,  and  not 
preachers.  If  they  could  also  teach,  it  was  simply  an  added 
advantage  in  their  personal  influence.  The  terms  "bishop," 
"elder,"  "deacon,"  have  to  us  a  solemn  and  ecclesiastical 
significance.  In  the  first  century  they  were  secular  terms, 
taken  from  common  life.  "Episcopos"  was  equivalent  to 
our  superintendent  or  manager.  The  churches  adopted  the 
forms  of  organization  to  which  their  members  were  accus- 
tomed in  their  voluntary  clubs  and  societies  and  in  their 
village  or  city  government,  just  as  Americans  in  organizing 
any  new  society  would  instinctively  organize  with  a  presi- 
dent, secretary,  treasurer,  and  executive  committee,  because 
that  is  the  form  of  organization  which  we  have  always  known. 
To  get  the  atmosphere  of  the  first  century,  we  must  strip 
these  terms  of  their  ecclesiastical  and  clerical  significance  and 
make  them  business  terms. 

These  officers  presided  at  the  common  meetings,  and  to  that 
extent  they  were  religious  officers.  They  watched  over  the 
moral  condition  of  the  members  and  guided  the  discipline 
of  the  church,  which  was  a  very  important  part  of  its  life, 
and  to  that  extent  they  were  moral  officers.  And  they  ad- 
ministered the  finances  and  organized  the  fraternal  care  of 

*  See  Hatch,  "  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches,"  pp. 
36-39- 


128  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  churches.  The  latter  was  probably  the  original  function 
of  the  bishops  in  so  far  as  they  differed  from  the  other  elders. 
The  bishop  rose  to  power  in  the  church  not  by  virtue  of  his 
teaching,  but  because  he  managed  the  funds  and  controlled 
the  extensive  executive  apparatus  of  the  church.  The  man 
who  held  the  purse-strings  finally  ruled  the  church.  It  was 
only  toward  the  close  of  the  second  century  that  the  bishops 
added  the  control  of  the  teaching  functions  to  their  other 
growing  powers. 

It  is  the  outcome  of  the  close  investigation  which  has  been 
given  to  this  subject  in  recent  years  that  the  framework  of 
organization  in  the  primitive  churches  was  devised,  not  for 
the  conduct  of  worship,  nor  for  teaching  and  preaching,  but 
for  the  administration  of  the  common  life.  The  first 
step  in  organization  was  the  appointment  of  the  Seven  at 
Jerusalem,  and  they  were  appointed  to  administer  the  fra- 
ternal help  of  the  church  with  greater  fairness.^  It  has 
usually  been  assumed  that  these  Seven  were  the  first 
"deacons."  It  now  seems  more  probable  that  the  dea- 
cons were  a  later  contrivance  for  the  purpose  of  render- 
ing subsidiary  assistance  to  the  bishops,  and  that  the  Seven 
were  the  first  elders.^  In  that  case  the  original  purpose  of 
the  presbyterate  was  not  teaching,  but  organized  helpful- 
ness. The  bishops  of  the  early  centuries  were  first  of  all 
great  executive  officers.  They  became  teachers  and  theo- 
logians when  doctrine  and  theology  became  so  essential  a 
part  of  church  life. 

If  these  results  of  modem  historical  investigation  are  to 

'  Acts  6.  1-6. 

^  Acts  II.  27-30,  we  find  "elders"  at  Jerusalem  doing  the  very  thing  the 
Seven  were  elected  to  do. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF   PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  1 29 

any  extent  correct,  they  furnish  a  powerful  proof  of  the  fact 
that  in  the  early  Christian  communities  the  administration  of 
mutual  helpfulness  was  a  very  important  part  of  their  exist- 
ence, and  that  their  common  life  must  have  extended  far 
beyond  their  common  religious  worship. 

If  we  inquire  in  what  directions  this  fraternal  helpfulness 
manifested  itself,  our  information  is  far  richer  about  the  third 
century  than  about  the  first  and  second.^  By  that  time  the 
organization  of  the  churches  had  been  centralized  and  per- 
fected, and  the  charitable  help  was  administered  through  this 
machinery.  In  the  first  century  the  methods  were  crude  and 
more  spontaneous,  but  the  spirit  of  it  was  probably  purer  than 
later,  more  democratic  and  less  debased  by  the  desire  to  win 
merit  by  ascetic  almsgiving. 

From  the  outset  widows  and  orphans  were  extensively  cared 
for.  The  social  conditions  of  the  ancient  world  and  the 
impulses  inherited  from  Judaism  laid  this  duty  upon  the 
churches.  About  a.d.  250,  the  church  at  Rome  had  fif- 
teen hundred  dependents  of  that  kind  under  its  care. 
When  Christians  were  in  prison  for  their  faith  or  exiled  to 
the  mines,  the  churches  cared  for  their  needs  and  comfort, 
often  in  lavish  degree.  It  was  not  uncommon  to  ransom 
Christians  imprisoned  for  debt.  The  proper  burial  of  the 
dead  was  even  more  important  to  the  sentiments  of  the 
ancient  world  than  to  ours.  Just  as  to-day,  the  poorer  classes 
organized  in  societies  which  guaranteed  their  members  an 
honorable  burial.  The  churches  performed  this  service  for 
their  members.  In  public  calamities,  like  pestilence  or  the 
invasion  of  nomadic  brigands,  they  stood  by  their  members 

'  See  Uhlhorn,  "History  of  Christian  Charity  in  the  Ancient  Church"; 
Harnack,  "  Expansion  of  Christianity,"  Bk.  II,  Chap.  III. 


130  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

and  sent  aid  to  a  distance.*  The  duty  of  working  was  strictly 
urged  in  the  primitive  Church;  holy  idleness  was  the  out- 
growth of  later  asceticism.  But  if  a  man  was  out  of  work, 
the  churches  assumed  the  responsibility  either  of  finding  him 
a  job  or  of  caring  for  him.^  Thus  the  means  of  life  were 
guaranteed  him  in  either  case.  The  church  at  Rome,  living 
in  the  midst  of  vast  pauperism,  could  boast  that  it  had  no 
beggar  in  its  membership.  The  troubles  coming  upon  them 
for  their  faith  made  Christians  even  more  migratory  than  the 
rest  of  the  city  population  of  that  day.  But  wherever  they 
went,  they  were  sure  of  Christian  hospitality  and  the  first  aid 
needed  to  get  a  foothold  in  a  strange  place.  Hospitality  was 
one  of  the  fundamental  Christian  virtues  in  primitive  Chris- 
tian life.'  It  was  so  open-handed  that  it  invited  exploitation 
by  professional  beggars.  The  heathen  writer  Lucian  made 
the  gullibihty  of  the  Christians  part  of  the  plot  of  his  novelette, 
"On  the  Death  of  Peregrinus  Proteus." 

By  the  end  of  the  third  century  charity  began  to  be  in- 
stitutionalized. There  were  Christian  lodging-houses  for 
strangers,  homes  for  the  aged,  the  sick,  the  poor.  In  the  first 
and  second  century  it  was  more  a  matter  of  direct  neighborly 
help  from  man  to  man.  Probably  the  chief  help  was  not 
given  in  the  form  of  money,   but  of  human   service  and 

*  See  the  account  of  the  pestilence  in  Alexandria,  a.d.  259,  in  Eusebius, 
"Church  History,"  VII,  22.  Also  Cyprian's  letter  to  the  Numidian  bishops, 
forwarding  a  gift  of  100,000  sestertia  from  the  church  at  Carthage  to  re- 
deem the  captives  of  brigands.     "Ante-Nicene  Fathers,"  V,  355. 

*  Hamack  quotes  from  the  "Pseudo-Clementine  Homilies"  (Ep.  Clem.  8), 
the  fine  maxim:  Texvlrri  tpyov,  dSpapel  fXeos,  "to  the  workman  a  job, 
to  the  man  unable  to  work  pity,"  i.e.  alms. 

'  Clement  of  Rome  (about  a.d.  96)  always  couples  faith  and  hospitality 
in  characterizing  the  Old  Testament  saints.  I  Clement,  X-XII,  "Ante- 
Nicene  Fathers,"  I,  7-8. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY         I3I 

influence.  In  Paul's  epistles  we  get  glimpses  of  influential 
families  in  whose  homes  the  church-groups  met  and  upon 
whom  the  task  of  hospitality  and  watch-care  chiefly  devolved. 
They  put  their  property,  their  influence  and  social  standing, 
at  the  service  of  the  Christian  community.  Paul  speaks  of 
such  with  deep  respect.  Stephanas,  who  came  from  Corinth 
to  visit  Paul  at  Ephesus,  was  a  man  of  that  kind.^  He  prob- 
ably made  this  journey  on  behalf  of  the  Church  at  his  own 
expense,  just  as  men  of  wealth  would  undertake  to  defray 
some  public  function  at  Athens,  or  paid  for  common  expenses 
in  the  voluntary  associations  of  Greek  social  hfe.  The  poor 
and  the  alien  were  without  political  rights  or  social  impor- 
tance, and  found  protection  by  close  relation  to  some  citizen 
of  wealth  and  standing.  The  relation  of  client  and  patron 
was  widespread  and  of  great  social  importance.  It  is  in- 
teresting that  where  our  conditions  are  similar  to  those  of  the 
ancient  world,  a  similar  relation  of  clientage  has  grown  up 
in  the  protection  given  to  the  poor  by  the  political  boss  and 
the  service  exacted  by  him  in  return.  It  is  probable  that  the 
wealthier  members  of  the  Christian  communities  served  as 
the  patroni  of  their  poorer  brethren.  Phoebe,  of  the  Corin- 
thian harbor-town  Cenchreae,  was  probably  not  a  poor 
deaconess,  but  a  woman  of  social  standing  who  had  served 
Paul  and  many  others  as  patrona? 

Christianity  spread  at  first  chiefly  in  the  cities  and  among 
the  lower  middle  class,  the  working  class,  and  the  slaves. 
The  poorer  classes  of  the  Empire  were  a  proletariat  much 
like  that  of  our  great  cities.    They  were  largely  composed  of 

'  I  Corinthians  16.  15-18. 

'  The  word  irpSffTans  used  by  Paul,  Romans  16.  1-2,  is  the  feminine  of 
wpoardTTji,  the  Greek  equivalent  of  patronus. 


132  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

slaves  and  of  freemen  who  were  economically  submerged 
through  the  competition  of  organized  slave  labor,  through 
the  drift  of  the  peasantry  toward  the  cities,  and  through  the 
increasing  economic  breakdown  of  the  Empire.  The  Chris- 
tian Church  was  of  immense  social  value  to  these  people. 
It  took  the  place  in  their  life  which  life  insurance,  sick  bene- 
V  fits,  accident  insurance,  friendly  societies,  and  some  features 
of  trades-unions  take  to-day.  The  individual  found  in  the 
community  a  hold  when  any  wave  of  misfortune  threatened 
to  sweep  him  off  his  feet  and  drag  him  out  to  sea  in  the  un- 
dertow of  misery.  It  is  now  generally  recognized  that  this 
element  of  mutual  help  was  quite  as  strong  a  factor  in  the 
growth  of  the  Christian  movement  as  the  attractiveness  of  the 
truth  it  presented.  Harnack  justly  makes  "The  Gospel  of 
Love  and  Charity"  one  of  the  chief  chapters  in  his  account 
of  the  missionary  expansion  during  the  first  three  centuries.^ 
The  historian  Schiller  in  his  history  of  the  imperial  age  of 
Rome  says:  "As  the  gospel  of  the  poor  and  oppressed,  of 
the  despairing  and  guilty,  Christianity  naturally  sought  its 
adherents  first  in  the  lower  strata  of  population,  and  if  we 
remember  what  moral  degradation  prevailed  in  the  Greek 
seaports,  we  realize  the  more  the  power  of  the  new  faith, 
which  was  able  to  awaken  a  higher  and  somewhat  more  ideal 
conception  of  life  even  amid  such  surroundings.  The  funda- 
mental idea  of  Christianity  .  .  .  could  unfold  but  slowly,  and 
only  a  few  of  the  nobler  spirits  could  rise  to  such  lofty  con- 
ceptions. With  the  majority  of  believers  the  determining 
motives  were  the  socialist  elements  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
Messianic  hope  and  the  expectation  of  a  better  life  beyond  on 

'  Harnack,  "The  Expansion  of  Christianity  in  the  First  Three  Centuries," 
Bk.  II,  Chap.  III. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY  1 33 

the  other  hand."  ^  Karl  Kautsky,  in  his  history  of  socialism,  / 
thinks  the  practical  aid  was  a  stronger  element  than  the  hope 
of  the  golden  age.  "  Like  the  Social  Democracy  to-day,  primi- 
tive Christianity  grew  to  a  power  irresistible  by  the  ruling 
classes  of  that  day  because  it  became  indispensable  to  the 
masses  of  the  population,"  Speaking  of  the  decay  of  com- 
munistic enthusiasm  in  the  Church  after  Constantine,  he 
says:  "But  even  in  this  weakened  form  Christianity  for  cen- 
turies accomplished  great  things  in  counteracting  pauperism. 
Though  it  did  not  abolish  poverty,  it  was  the  most  effective 
organization  for  alleviating  the  misery  growing  out  of  the 
general  poverty  within  its  reach.  And  that  was  perhaps 
the  strongest  lever  which  lifted  it  to  success."  ^ 

The  history  of  Christian  charity  has  been  a  favorite  part  The  leaven 
of  popular  church  history.  It  is  delightful  to  think  of  heathen  democrac^ 
men  coming  under  the  influence  of  Jesus  and  the  Christian 
Church  and  developing  such  tenderness  of  affection  and  such 
ardor  of  self-sacrifice  amidst  "a  world  without  love."  But 
Christianity  was  not  simply  the  culture  of  the  faculty  of  love. 
It  brought  with  it  a  strong  leaven  of  democracy  and  protest 
which  unsettled  men.  It  created  social  unrest  and  carried 
disturbance  in  its  train. 

Shortly  after  Paul  left  the  little  church  at  Thessalonica 
he  got  word  that  some  of  the  Christians  there  had  quit  work- 
ing. They  seem  to  have  been  unusually  poor.  Consequently 
the  hope  of  the  Lord's  coming  had  taken  powerful  hold  on 
them  and  they  expected  it  immediately.^     But  if  relief  was 

'  Hermann  Schiller,  "  Geschichte  der  romischen  Kaiserzeit,"  I,  461-462. 
'  Karl  Kautsky,  "Die  Vorlauferdes  neueren  Sozialismus,"  pp.  23  and  32. 
'  2  Thessalonians  2.  1-12. 


134  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

coming  so  soon,  why  go  on  breaking  their  backs?  It  is  all 
very  well  for  men  in  comfortable  arm-chairs  to  write  about 
the  dignity  of  labor,  but  those  who  have  had  nothing  but 
labor  in  their  life  have  an  instinctive  hankering  for  the  dignity 
of  leisure.  Grinding  social  pressure  and  tense  millennial 
expectations  have  again  and  again  in  the  history  of  Chris- 
tianity caused  crowds  to  drop  their  work  and  wait  for  the 
Lord,  who  would  be  their  emancipator  from  drudgery.  Paul 
very  wisely  explained  to  them  that  the  Lord's  coming  was 
not  quite  as  near  as  they  supposed,  and  that  in  any  case  "he 
that  will  not  work,  shall  not  eat."  ^ 

At  Corinth  the  social  unrest  seized  the  women.  They  felt 
the  hot  promptings  of  the  Spirit  in  their  souls  just  like  the 
men,  and  rose  to  prophesy.  They,  too,  felt  their  intellectual 
life  enriched  with  new  thoughts  and  a  wider  outlook;  why 
should  they  not  have  the  right  to  teach  in  the  Church  ?  They 
felt  the  emancipating  sense  of  equality  and  the  glad  sweep  of 
the  new  brotherhood  in  the  meeting  and  put  off  the  veil, 
which  the  lustfulness  of  men  and  long-standing  social  in- 
feriority had  compelled  women  to  wear  when  in  presence  of 
strangers.  Paul  in  one  of  his  bold,  prophetic  strains  asserted 
that  in  Christ  all  the  old  distinctions  of  race  and  social  stand- 
ing would  disappear,  including  the  difference  between  man 
and  woman.  The  spirit  of  Christianity  has  accomplished 
that  result  in  the  slow  progress  of  centuries,  and  our  women 
are  now  free  and  our  equals.  If  these  Corinthian  women  tried 
to  take  at  once  that  heritage  of  liberty  which  was  to  be  theirs 
eventually,  we  cannot  help  sympathizing  with  them.  But 
we  can  also  understand  the  unusual  vexation  and  distress  in 
Paul's  mind  when  he  heard  of  this  disorder,  and  agree  with 

*  2  Thessalonians  3.  6-15. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY  135 

his  prudence  in  bidding  them  keep  within  the  bounds  of 
customary  modesty  and  restraint.^ 

The  social  unsettlement  even  reached  family  relations  and 
created  a  religious  tendency  to  divorce.  There  were  Chris- 
tians who  felt  that  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  live  a  Chris- 
tian life  while  married  to  a  heathen.  The  question  whether 
it  was  not  the  right  or  even  the  duty  of  a  Christian  to  sever 
so  incompatible  a  relation  had  become  so  pressing  at  Corinth 
that  it  was  one  of  the  chief  subjects  on  which  the  Church 
consulted  Paul  by  letter  and  committee.  There  were  others 
with  whom  the  new  passion  for  sexual  purity  had  awakened 
scruples  even  about  the  relations  within  wedlock,  and  who 
were  ready  to  assert  the  right  of  the  individual  to  himseK  on 
high  religious  grounds.  Here,  too,  we  have  the  anticipation 
of  later  results  of  Christian  influences :  a  keener  feeling  that 
marriage  should  rest  on  spiritual  affinity  and  sympathy  and 
not  on  physical  or  conventional  grounds,  and  a  finer  sense  of 
the  right  of  the  soul  to  its  own  body.  Of  course  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly likely,  as  human  nature  goes,  that  in  some  cases 
old  dislikes  and  aversions  were  simply  seeking  cover  under 
these  new  religious  pleas.  But  in  any  case  it  must  have  been 
a  leaven  of  unrest  in  various  families.^ 

We  catch  a  glimpse,  too,  of  a  new  stirring  among  the  Chris- 
tian slaves.  In  discussing  the  question  whether  Christians 
ought  to  sever  marriages  with  heathen,  Paul  sets  up  the  general 
principle  that  a  Christian  can  be  a  Christian  in  any  outward 
set  of  circumstances,  and  that  he  ought  to  remain  in  that  con- 
dition in  which  the  call  of  God  found  him.  In  that  connec- 
tion he  turns  to  address  the  slaves :  "Were  you  a  slave  when 
you  were  called?    Do  not  let  that  trouble  you.     Nay,  even 

'  I  Corinthians  11.  2-16,  14.  33-36.  *  i  Corinthians  7. 


136  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

if  you  have  the  chance  to  gain  your  freedom,  prefer  to  re- 
main as  you  are.  For  he  that  was  called  to  be  a  Christian 
while  a  slave,  is  henceforth  a  freed-man  of  the  Lord;  like- 
wise he  that  was  called  in  freedom,  is  henceforth  the  slave 
of  Christ."  ^  Evidently  there  were  Christian  slaves  who  were 
troubled  by  their  servile  status.  They  were  dependent  on 
the  permission  of  their  masters  for  the  right  to  be  Christians 
at  all.  They  were  liable  to  be  commanded  to  perform  im- 
moral or  idolatrous  acts,  and  they  had  no  legal  right  to  re- 
fuse. But  Paul's  argument  indicates  that  the  cause  of  un- 
rest lay  even  deeper,  in  a  newly  awakened  sense  of  dignity 
and  human  worth.  How  could  a  soul  belonging  to  Christ 
still  bend  to  the  yoke  of  man  ?  Paul  says  it  can  be  done ;  the 
Christian  slave  is  spiritually  free  in  Christ  and  that  ought  to 
content  him.  Let  him  wear  the  badge  of  slavery  with  that 
inward  sense  of  emancipation.  There  are  other  passages  in 
the  New  Testament  touching  on  the  relations  of  Christian 
slaves  to  their  masters.  In  heathen  literature  the  com- 
monest vice  of  slaves  was  stealing.  The  most  serious  danger 
of  Christian  slaves  apparently  was  the  independence  and  ag- 
gressiveness begotten  of  a  new  sense  of  equality  and  worth. 
Especially  if  their  masters  were  also  their  brethren  in  Christ, 
the  moral  problem  thereby  created  was  not  always  satis- 
factorily solved.^ 

We  have  already  touched  on  the  views  taken  by  Christians 
about  the  Roman  Empire.  These  theoretical  views  were  sure 
to  manifest  themselves  at  least  occasionally  in  practical  con- 
duct. Christians  were  citizens  of  a  higher  kingdom.  The 
Empire  was  not  their  highest  good.     It  was  soon  to  come 

*  I  Corinthians  7.  17-24. 

^  See  Ephesians  6.  5-9;  i  Peter  2.  18-25;  i  Timothy  6.  1-2. 


SOCIAL    IMPETUS    OF    PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  137 

to  naught  by  God's  hand.  Its  laws  were  not  to  them  the 
supreme  laws,  nor  in  any  sense  identical  with  the  moral  law. 
They  were  often  placed  in  a  position  where  it  was  their  reli- 
gious duty  to  disobey  the  commands  of  the  public  officers. 
Even  Paul,  who  takes  so  respectful  an  attitude  toward  the 
moral  value  of  government,  had  no  real  use  for  the  State  so 
far  as  Christians  were  concerned.  He  did  not  think  of  try- 
ing to  bring  Christian  influences  to  bear  on  the  State;  but 
neither  did  he  want  any  influence  of  the  State  in  the  affairs 
of  Christians.  If  brethren  had  trouble  between  them,  they 
were  not  to  begin  litigation  before  the  courts  of  the  Empire, 
but  to  settle  by  the  arbitration  of  other  brethren.^  Chris- 
tians withdrew  from  the  surrounding  heathen  life  and 
minimized  all  contact  with  it.  This  involved  that  they  had 
to  reproduce  and  parallel  the  necessary  institutions  of  society 
within  their  own  community.  The  churches  legislated  for 
their  members  and  exercised  judicial  functions,  enforcing 
them  with  various  grades  of  disciplinary  punishments.  In 
heathen  life  the  religious  and  civil  organizations  were  one; 
the  officers  of  the  State  as  such  performed  the  public  religious 
acts.  Through  the  hostile  relation  of  the  Christian  Church 
and  the  heathen  State,  which  continued  for  nearly  three  cen- 
turies, the  Church  developed  a  permanent  organization  of  its 
own,  which  controlled  and  directed  the  life  of  its  members 
with  a  pressure  often  more  insistent  and  searching  than  that 
of  the  State.  The  Church  was,  in  fact,  a  State  within  the  State. 
The  ecclesiastical  courts  and  the  canon  law  of  later  times 
were  an  outgrowth  of  this  situation.  It  was  the  realization 
of  this  which  finally  roused  the  Empire  to  active  hostility 
against  the  Church.     There  were  only  two  persecutions  in 

*i  Corinthians  6.  i-ii. 


138  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

which  the  Empire  took  the  initiative  and  exerted  its  vast 
strength  to  destroy  the  Church,  the  one  beginning  a.d.  250 
and  the  other  a.d.  303,  each  lasting  abaut  ten  years.  Each 
of  these  was  directed,  not  against  the  belief  of  Christians, 
but  against  this  all-pervading,  tenacious  organization  which 
paralleled  and  rivalled  the  organization  of  the  Empire  and 
seemed  to  threaten  its  sovereignty. 

With  such  an  inward  emancipation  from  the  ordinary 
patriotism  and  enthusiasm  for  the  Empire;  with  such  a 
parallel  organization  to  absorb  the  obedience  and  devotion 
of  Christians ;  and  under  the  painful  pressure  of  unjust  per- 
secutions and  frequent  chicanery,  it  would  be  strange  if 
practical  revolutionary  sentiments  had  never  sprouted  within 
the  fenced  acreage  of  the  Church.  It  is  true,  in  all  docu- 
ments intended  for  the  general  public,  especially  in  the 
writings  of  the  apologists,  there  are  emphatic  assurances  of 
the  harmlessness  and  patient  obedience  of  Christians.  These 
writings  had  the  very  practical  purpose  of  lightning  rods  to 
draw  off  the  electricity  that  might  gather  in  high  places  and 
be  discharged  in  sudden  strokes  of  persecuting  anger.  Doubt- 
less all  that  the  apologists  said  was  true.  Doubtless  Chris- 
tians did  pray  for  the  emperor.  So  do  the  persecuted  sec- 
tarians in  Russia  or  the  Christian  Armenians  in  Turkey ;  but 
perchance  the  cloth  of  their  sentiments  shows  a  different 
pattern  and  color  on  the  lower  side.  The  repeated  injunc- 
tions in  the  New  Testament  to  give  honor  to  the  emperor 
and  to  pay  taxes  wherever  they  were  due,  may  indicate  that 
these  duties  were  not  self-evident  to  all.  Paul  clearly  goes 
out  of  his  way  in  his  letter  to  the  church  at  Rome  to  urge 
respect  for  the  government  and  willing  payment  of  taxes.* 

*  Romans  13.  1-7. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS   OF   PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIANITY         I39 

The  psychological  motive  for  that  passage  must  have  been 
either  to  conciliate  the  good-will  of  influential  men  at  the 
capital  into  whose  hands  the  letter  might  fall,  or  the  knowl- 
edge and  fear  that  contrary  sentiments  existed  either  at 
Rome  or  in  other  places  with  which  Paul  was  acquainted. 
Christians  who  were  brought  before  Roman  officials  did  not 
always  manifest  the  ideal  meekness  with  which  we  are  apt  to 
invest  their  memory;  they  displayed  their  human  nature  by 
taunts  and  prophecies  of  disaster.  During  the  Decian  per- 
secution, when  the  vacant  seat  of  the  Roman  bishop  was 
once  more  filled,  an  eminent  Christian  leader  boasted  that 
the  emperor  would  rather  have  heard  of  a  rival  em- 
peror being  proclaimed  than  of  a  bishop  being  seated  at 
Rome.  The  tone  of  pugnacity  and  antagonism  is  unmis- 
takable.* 

Thus  the  spirit  of  primitive  Christianity  did  not  spread 
only  sweet  peace  and  tender  charity,  but  the  leaven  of  social 
unrest.  It  caused  some  to  throw  down  their  tools  and  quit 
work.  It  stirred  women  to  break  down  the  restraints  of 
custom  and  modesty.  It  invaded  the  intimacies  of  domestic 
relations  and  threatened  families  with  disruption.  It  awakened 
the  slaves  to  a  sense  of  worth  and  a  longing  for  freedom  which 
made  slavery  doubly  irksome  and  strained  their  relations  to 
their  masters.  It  disturbed  the  patriotism  and  loyalty  of 
citizens  for  their  country,  and  intervened  between  the  sover- 
eign State  and  its  subjects. 

All  this  is  neither  strange  nor  reprehensible.  No  great 
historic  revolution  has  ever  worked  its  way  without  break- 
ing and  splintering  the  old  to  make  way  for  the  new.  New 
wine  is  sure  to  ferment  and  burst  the  old  wineskins.     More- 

'  Cyprian,  Epistle  51,  9,  "Ante-Nicene  Fathers,"  V,  329. 


140  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

over,  it  is  likely  to  taste  sour  and  yeasty,  and  some  will  say, 
"The  old  is  better."  Jesus  foresaw  that  the  Christian  move- 
ment would  work  incidental  harm  and  pain.  He  had  come 
to  cast  a  fire  upon  the  earth.  He  had  not  come  to  bring 
'^  peace  but  the  sword.  Families  would  be  riven  in  twain  and 
set  in  antagonism,  two  against  three.  But  he  was  wilhng  to 
pay  the  cost  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in  tears  and  blood  if 
need  be.  Our  argument  here  is  simply  this,  that  Christianity 
must  have  had  a  strong  social  impetus  to  evoke  such  stirrings 
of  social  unrest  and  discontent.  It  was  not  purely  religious, 
^  %/  V  but  also  a  democratic  and  social  movement.  Or,  to  state  it 
far  more  truly :  it  was  so  strongly  and  truly  religious  that  it 
was  of  necessity  democratic  and  social  also. 

The  out-  In  spite  of  the  defectiveness  and  one-sidedness  of  the  his- 

torical sources  furnishing  the  material  for  our  study,  we  have 
found  an  abundant  and  throbbing  social  life  in  primitive 
Christianity. 

All  of  its  theories  involved  a  bold  condemnation  of  existing 
society.  Whether  that  society  was  to  be  overthrown  by  a 
divine  catastrophe  of  judgment  or  displaced  and  absorbed  in 
the  higher  life  of  the  Christian  community,  in  any  case  it  was 
to  go.  The  future  of  society  belonged  to  that  new  life 
originated  by  Christ.  Christianity  was  conscious  of  a  far- 
reaching  and  thorough  political  and  social  mission.  This  is 
the  more  remarkable  because  it  was  weak  in  numbers,  ap- 
parently withdrawn  from  the  larger  life  of  society,  and  with- 
out any  present  or  any  apparent  future  influence  on  the 
organized  life  of  the  civilized  world.  Such  convictions,  cher- 
ished in  the  face  of  such  odds,  argue  that  it  was  launched 
with  a  powerful  and  invincible  social  impetus,  and  that  the 


come. 


SOCIAL   IMPETUS    OF   PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIANITY  I41 

consciousness  of  a  regenerating  mission  for  social  life  is 
inseparable  from  the  highest  form  of  religion. 

The  strength  of  its  social  tendencies  was  not  exhausted  by 
its  hopes  for  the  future.  It  immediately  began  to  build  a 
society  within  which  the  new  ideals  of  moral  and  social  life 
were  to  be  reahzed  at  once,  so  far  as  the  limitations  of  an 
evil  environment  permitted.  The  primitive  Christian  churches 
were  not  ecclesiastical  organizations  so  much  as  fraternal 
communities.  They  withdrew  their  members  from  the  social 
life  outside  and  organized  a  complete  social  life  within  their 
circle.  Their  common  meals  expressed  and  created  social 
solidarity.  Their  organization  at  first  was  executive  and 
was  devised  to  meet  social  and  moral,  rather  than  religious 
and  doctrinal,  needs.  Their  income  was  completely  devoted 
to  fraternal  help.  As  organizations  for  mutual  help  and  fra- 
ternal cooperation  the  Christian  churches  became  indispen- 
sable to  the  city  population  and  invincible  by  the  government. 

This  fraternal  helpfulness  was  more  than  mere  religious 
kindliness.  It  was  animated  by  the  consciousness  of  a 
creative  social  mission  and  accompanied  by  a  spirit  of  social 
unrest  which  proves  the  existence  of  powerful  currents  of 
democratic  feeling.  Under  the  first  impact  of  its  ideas  and 
spirit,  men  and  women  tried  to  realize  at  once  those  social 
changes  which  have  actually  been  accomplished  in  centuries 
of  development.  This  impulse  proves  that  a  reconstructive 
social  dynamic  inheres  in  Christianity  and  must  find  an  out- 
let in  some  form,  slow  or  swift. 

We  were  prepared  to  find  a  long  drop  downward  when  we 
passed  from  Jesus  to  the  thoughts  and  doings  of  his  followers. 
We  did  find  it  so.  In  their  religious  life  not  even  the  greatest 
maintained  his  level,  and  the  lowest  groped  in  a  density  of 


142  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

superstition  and  puerile  legalism  which  makes  it  seem  queer 
to  put  the  great  name  of  Jesus  upon  them.  And  yet  the 
higher  impulse  was  implanted.  Give  it  time !  Humanity 
is  an  organism  that  passes  through  a  long  series  of  meta- 
morphoses, and  it  measures  its  seasons  by  centuries.  The 
purification  of  the  religious  life,  the  comprehension  of  the 
real  meaning  and  spirit  of  Christ,  have  made  marvellous 
progress  in  recent  times. 

In  the  social  direction  of  the  religious  spirit  we  found  a 
like  decline.  There  is  not  the  same  unerring  penetration  of 
judgment  on  social  morality,  not  the  same  eagle-eyed  boldness 
of  hope  and  faith  for  the  future,  not  the  same  sweet  reasonable- 
ness about  the  slow  methods  of  realizing  the  ultimate  goal, 
not  the  same  lovable  love  nor  the  same  power  to  heal  and 
save  the  broken  and  diseased  members  of  the  social  body. 
There  is  a  good  deal  of  crude  thinking,  of  sectarian  narrow- 
ness and  pride,  of  ecclesiastical  ambition,  of  complete  for- 
getfulness  of  the  high  mission  to  the  world.  And  yet  there 
is  the  germ  of  a  new  social  life  for  humanity,  the  conception 
of  a  social  morality  based  on  love  and  world-wide  in  its 
obligation.  Give  it  time !  This,  too,  under  ever  changing 
forms,  may  work  its  way,  and  triumph  yet.  The  modern 
emancipation  of  the  intellectual  life  began  in  the  Renaissance 
of  the  fifteenth  century  and  is  not  finished  yet.  The  modem 
emancipation  of  the  religious  life  began  in  the  Reformation 
of  the  sixteenth  century  and  is  not  finished  yet.  The  modem 
emancipation  of  the  political  life  began  in  the  Puritan  Revo- 
lution of  the  seventeenth  century  and  is  not  finished  yet.  The 
modern  emancipation  of  the  industrial  life  began  in  the 
nineteenth  century  and  is  not  finished  yet.  Let  us  have  pa- 
\  \    tience.    Let  us  have  hope.     And  above  all  let  us  have  faith. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WHY   HAS   CHRISTIANITY   NEVER   UNDERTAKEN   THE   WORK 
OF  SOCIAL  RECONSTRUCTION? 

In  the  preceding  chapters  we  have  studied  the  origins  of 
Christianity.  It  rested  historically  on  the  religion  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets,  and  the  great  aim  of  the  prophets  was  to 
constitute  the  social  and  political  life  of  their  nation  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  will  of  God.  The  fundamental  purpose  of 
Jesus  was  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  which 
involved  a  thorough  regeneration  and  reconstitution  of  social 
life.  Primitive  Christianity  cherished  an  ardent  hope  of  a 
radically  new  era,  and  within  its  limits  sought  to  realize  a 
social  life  on  a  new  moral  basis. 

Thus  Christianity  as  an  historical  movement  was  launched 
with  all  the  purpose  and  hope,  all  the  impetus  and  power, 
of  a  great  revolutionary  movement,  pledged  to  change  the 
world-as-it-is  into  the  world-as-it-ought-to-be. 

The  organization  in  which  this  movement  was  embodied, 
after  three  centuries  of  obscurity  and  oppression,  rose  trium- 
phant to  be  the  dominant  power  of  the  civilized  world. 
Christian  churches  were  scattered  broadcast  over  the  Roman 
Empire.  Their  numbers  were  so  great  and  their  organiza- 
tion so  flexible  and  tenacious  that  the  final  attempts  of  the 
Empire  to  uproot  the  Church  proved  futile  and  the  Empire 
capitulated  and  made  terms.  Christianity  supplanted  hea- 
thenism as  the  State  religion  of  the  Empire.  Its  churches  were 
endowed  with  the  ancient  properties  and  rights  of  the  temples. 

143 


144  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL    CRISIS 

Its  clergy  were  given  immunity  from  the  taxes  and  exactions 
which  crushed  all  other  classes.  Its  members  filled  the  civil 
service.  Its  great  bishops  had  the  ear  of  the  men  in  power. 
The  population  of  the  ancient  world  entered  the  Church  en 
masse,  and  though  the  great  majority  may  have  had  little 
experience  of  the  inner  power  of  the  new  faith,  yet  the  people 
lay  open  to  the  instruction  and  guidance  of  the  Church.  The 
bishops  came  to  be  the  leaders  of  the  local  nobility  which 
controlled  the  municipal  life  of  the  Roman  cities.  In  the 
East  the  great  Justinian  formally  placed  the  administration 
of  public  charity  and  the  supervision  of  the  public  officials 
under  the  bishops. 

When  the  machinery  of  imperial  administration  broke  down 
in  the  provinces  under  the  invasion  of  the  barbarians  in  the 
fifth  century,  the  machinery  of  the  Church  remained  un- 
broken. The  provincial  cities  rose  like  islands  of  the  old 
Roman  civilization  amid  the  flood  of  barbarian  life  that 
covered  the  provinces,  and  in  the  cities  the  bishops  were  the 
leaders,  the  protectors  of  the  poor,  and  the  organizers  of  the 
forces  of  law  and  order.  Amid  the  general  disorder  and  in- 
security the  Church  offered  the  stable  points  and  thereby 
gathered  power  to  itself.  Ancient  families  became  extinct 
and  the  Church  became  the  heir  of  their  lands  and  slaves 
and  serfs.  Small  proprietors  sought  security  by  committing 
their  lands  to  the  Church  and  becoming  its  tenants.  The 
landed  wealth  of  the  Church  alone  sufficed  to  make  it  a  power 
of  the  highest  rank  in  the  feudal  system  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
in  which  all  power  finally  rested  on  the  possession  of  the  land. 
Bishops  and  abbots  became  feudal  dignitaries,  sometimes 
almost  sovereign  princes  in  their  own  domains,  and  always 
with  a  potent  voice  in  the  government  of  their  nations.    The 


THE    WORK   OF    SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  145 

pope  became  a  sovereign  over  a  large  part  of  Italy,  and  his 
material  power  and  spiritual  influence  were  so  vast  that  he 
could  wrestle  on  even  terms  for  supremacy  with  the  emperors. 
The  Church  was  the  preserver  of  the  remnants  of  intellectual 
culture,  the  sole  schoolmistress  of  the  raw  peoples.  Her 
clergy  long  had  almost  a  monopoly  of  education,  and  were 
the  secretaries  of  the  nobles,  the  chancellors  and  prime 
ministers  of  kings.  The  Church  had  its  own  law  code  and 
its  own  courts  of  law  which  were  supreme  over  the  clergy, 
and  had  large  rights  of  jurisdiction  even  over  the  laity,  so 
that  it  could  develop  and  give  effect  to  its  own  ideas  of  law 
and  right.  Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  the  sway  of  the 
Church  over  the  moral  and  spiritual  life  of  the  people,  her 
power  to  inspire  and  direct  their  enthusiasms  and  energies, 
her  chance  for  moulding  their  conceptions  of  life,  were  amazing 
and  unparalleled  by  any  other  force. 

In  modem  life  the  relation  between  Church  and  State  has 
grown  looser,  the  reverence  for  the  Church  has  sensibly 
waned,  and  other  intellectual  and  spiritual  forces  have  risen 
by  her  side  and  successfully  claimed  part  of  the  field  which 
she  formerly  held  alone.  But  the  potential  efficiency  of  the 
Church  in  affecting  public  opinion  and  custom  is  still  almost 
incalculable,  even  in  the  least  religious  countries  of  Europe. 
In  our  own  country,  if  the  Church  directed  its  full  available 
force  against  any  social  wrong,  there  is  probably  nothing  that 
could  stand  up  against  it. 

Here,  then,  is  a  vast  force  which  by  all  the  tradition  of  its 
origin  and  by  its  very  essence  is  committed  to  the  moral  re- 
construction of  human  society.  It  has  had  time  and  oppor- 
tunity. Why,  then,  has  it  not  reconstituted  the  social  life  of 
Christendom  ? 


146  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Two  answers  may  be  given  to  this  question,  each  the 
opposite  of  the  other. 

It  may  be  rephed  that  in  spite  of  the  spread  and  power  of 
the  Church  any  actual  reconstruction  was  impossible.  Chris- 
tianity was  rising  when  the  ancient  world  was  breaking  down. 
By  the  time  the  Church  had  gained  sufficient  power  to 
exercise  a  controlling  influence,  the  process  of  social  decay, 
like  the  breakdown  of  a  physical  organism  in  a  wasting 
disease,  was  beyond  remedy.  The  unsolved  social  questions 
of  pagan  centuries  had  created  a  despotic  government,  a 
venal  and  rapacious  bureaucracy,  a  vicious  and  parasitic  aris- 
tocracy of  wealth,  and  a  vast  mass  of  nerveless  and  hopeless 
hereditary  paupers.  The  impact  of  the  Teutonic  barbarians 
merely  crumpled  up  an  organization  that  was  hollow  within. 
What  power  could  save  a  State  that  was  rotten  to  the  core  ? 
A  similar  huge  task  confronted  it  in  working  on  the  raw  clay 
of  that  new  human  material  which  covered  the  ancient 
civilization  like  a  landslide  in  the  great  migration  of  nations. 
Amid  the  general  anarchy,  against  the  coarse  vice  and  bru- 
tality of  the  barbarians,  herself  harried  by  the  repacity  of 
the  nobles  and  weakened  by  the  ignorance  and  barbarism 
of  her  own  clergy,  the  Church  did  what  she  could,  but  a 
thorough  social  reconstruction  was  impossible.  In  modem 
life  her  power  is  broken  by  the  prevalent  doubt  and  apostasy, 
and  the  current  of  materialism  and  mammonism  is  now  too 
great  to  be  stemmed. 

Such  a  statement  of  the  case  deserves  a  more  sympathetic 
consideration  than  it  is  likely  to  get  from  either  friend  or  foe 
of  the  Church.  Impetuous  Christians  are  apt  to  see  only  the 
duty  that  has  been  left  undone,  and  not  the  difficulties  which 
beset  the  stout  hearts  of  the  past.    Those  who  are  no  friends 


J 


THE   WORK   OF    SOCIAL    RECONSTRUCTION  I47 

of  the  Church  often  have  no  realizing  experience  themselves 
what  a  task  it  is  to  counteract  even  a  single,  deep-rooted  moral 
evil  or  to  quicken  a  single  group  of  human  beings  to  a  nobler 
life.  Whoever  thinks  that  Christianity  ought  to  have  ac- 
complished more  than  it  did,  confesses  great  faith  in  its 
potency.  I  have  that  faith.  I  feel  so  deeply  the  inexhaust- 
ible powers  of  renewal  pulsating  in  it,  that  its  very  achieve- 
ments only  make  me  ask :  Why  has  it  never  done  what  it  was 
sent  to  do? 

Others  again  will  return  the  opposite  reply.  If  we  ask  why  ; 
Christianity  has  not  reconstituted  society,  they  will  say  it  has 
done  so.  Has  it  not  lifted  woman  to  equality  and  com- 
panionship with  man,  secured  the  sanctity  and  stability  of 
marriage,  changed  parental  despotism  to  parental  service,  4 
and  eliminated  unnatural  vice,  the  abandonment  of  children, 
blood  revenge,  and  the  robbery  of  the  shipwrecked  from  the 
customs  of  Christian  nations  ?  Has  it  not  abolished  slavery, 
mitigated  war,  covered  all  lands  with  a  network  of  charities 
to  uplift  the  poor  and  the  fallen,  fostered  the  institutions  of 
education,  aided  the  progress  of  civil  liberty  and  social 
justice,  and  diffused  a  softening  tenderness  throughout 
human  life  ?  ^ 

It  has  done  all  that,  and  vastly  more.  The  influence  of 
Christianity  in  taming  selfishness  and  stimulating  the  sym- 
pathetic affections,  in  creating  a  resolute  sense  of  duty,  a 
stanch  love  of  liberty  and  independence,  an  irrepressible 
hunger  for  justice  and  a  belief  in  the  rights  of  the  poor,  has 
been  so  subtle  and  penetrating  that  no  one  can  possibly  trace 
its  effects.  We  might  as  well  try  to  count  up  the  effect  in  our 
organism  of  all  the  oxygen  we  have  inhaled  since  our  first 

*  For  a  fine,  popular  statement  of  these  changes  see  Brace, "  Gesta  Christi."     -^ 


148  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

gasp  for  breath.  In  so  far  as  humanity  has  yet  been  re- 
deemed, Christianity  has  been  its  redemption.  Many  of  us 
have  made  test  of  that  regenerating  power  in  our  personal 
lives.  Many,  too,  have  marked  the  palpable  difference  in 
the  taste  of  life  between  some  social  circle  really  affected  by 
Christian  kindliness  and  a  similar  circle  untouched  by  Chris- 
tian motives  and  affections.  What  is  true  within  such  small 
spheres  of  social  life  has  been  true  in  the  large  area  of  West- 
em  civilization.  And  yet  human  society  has  not  been 
^  reconstituted  in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  necessary  to  remind  ourselves  that 
Christian  writers  who  describe  the  influence  of  Christianity 
on  human  life  are  always  tempted  to  emphasize  the  con- 
trast between  heathenism  and  Christian  society  by  select- 
ing the  darkest  aspects  of  the  former  and  the  brightest  sides 
of  the  latter.^  The  witticisms  of  heathen  satirists  and  the 
sombre  invectives  of  Christian  moralists  are  quoted  to  char- 
acterize heathen  life.  But  if  some  socialist  historian  of  the 
twenty-fifth  century  should  ransack  the  files  of  our  comic 
papers  and  of  our  *' muck-raking"  magazines,  what  an  ap- 
palling, unrelieved,  and  unfair  picture  he  would  get  of  society 
under  our  individualistic  regime  !  On  the  other  hand,  in  de- 
scribing Christian  society  we  are  apt  to  assume  that  Chris- 
tian theory  was  identical  with  Christian  practice;  that  the 
declamations  of  some  ancient  Christian  rhetorician  were 
sober  scientific  estimates;  and  that  the  highly  moral  edicts 
of  Christian  emperors  were  enforced  better  than  the  highly 

*  This  holds  true  not  only  of  Brace,  "Gesta  Christi,"  but  of  such  solid 
and  admirable  works  as  Doellinger,  "  Gentile  and  Jew,"  and  Uhlhorn's  "  Con- 
flict of  Christianity  with  Heathenism"  and  his  "History  of  Christian  Charity." 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 49 

moral  laws  of  Kansas  or  New  York.  We  are  apt,  also,  to 
forget  that  the  moral  force  of  Christianity  was  usually  only 
one  factor  in  producing  such  a  change  as  the  abolition  of 
slavery  or  piracy,  and  that  over  against  the  benign  influ- 
ences of  the  Church  must  be  set  the  malign  and  divisive 
influences  which  she  created  by  persecuting  zeal,  intellectual 
intolerance,  or  religious  wars.  In  short,  we  must  soberly 
face  the  fact  that  a  good  many  deductions  have  to  be  made 
from  the  popular  panegyrics,  and  that  the  Church  has  not 
accomplished  all  that  is  often  claimed  for  her. 

In  the  next  place,  the  social  effects  which  are  usually 
enumerated  do  not  constitute  a  reconstruction  of  society  on  a 
Christian  basis,  but  were  mainly  a  suppression  of  some  of  the 
most  glaring  evils  in  the  social  system  of  the  time.  For 
instance,  amid  the  incessant  feuds  of  the  Middle  Ages  the 
Church  for  a  short  time  and  within  a  limited  area  succeeded 
in  imposing  the  Truce  of  God  and  so  giving  the  harassed 
people  a  chance  to  breathe.  In  our  own  time  it  has  aided 
in  mitigating  the  suffering  entailed  by  war  through  the  Red 
Cross  conventions  and  otherwise.  But  it  has  never  yet  turned 
more  than  a  fragment  of  its  moral  force  against  war  as  such. 
The  Church  is  rendering  some  service  to-day  in  opposing 
child  labor  and  the  sweat-shop  system,  which  are  among 
the  culminating  atrocities  of  the  wages  system,  but  its  con- 
science has  not  at  all  awakened  to  the  wrongfulness  of  the 
wages  system  as  a  whole,  on  which  our  industry  rests.  Thus, 
in  general,  the  Church  has  often  rendered  valuable  aid  by 
joining  the  advanced  public  conscience  of  any  period  in 
its  protest  against  some  single  intolerable  evil,  but  it  has 
accepted  as  inevitable  the  general  social  system  under  which 
the  world  was  living  at  the  time,  and  has  not  undertaken 


y 


150  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

any  thoroughgoing  social  reconstruction  in  accordance  with 
Christian  principles. 

In  the  third  place,  the  most  important  effects  of  Christianity 
went  out  from  it  without  the  intention  of  the  Church,  or  even 
against  its  will.  For  instance,  the  position  of  woman  has 
doubtless  been  elevated  through  the  influence  of  Christianity, 
but  by  its  indirect  and  diffused  influences  rather  than  by  any 
\  direct  championship  of  the  organized  Church.  It  is  probably 
fair  to  say  that  most  of  the  great  Churches  through  their 
teaching  and  organization  have  exerted  a  conservative  and 
♦^  retarding  influence  on  the  rise  of  woman  to  equality  with  man. 
Similarly  Christianity  has  been  one  of  the  most  powerful 
causes  of  democracy,  but  the  conscious  influence  of  the 
Church  has  more  widely  been  exerted  against  democracy  than 
for  it.  A  volatile  spirit  has  always  gone  out  from  organized 
Christianity  and  aroused  men  to  love  freedom  and  justice 
and  their  fellow-men.  It  is  this  diffused  spirit  of  Christianity 
rather  than  the  conscious  purpose  of  organized  Christianity 
which  has  been  the  chief  moral  force  in  social  changes.  It 
has  often  taken  its  finest  form  in  heretics  and  free-thinkers, 
and  in  non-Christian  movements.  The  Church  has  often 
been  indifferent  or  hostile  to  the  effects  which  it  had  itself 
produced.  The  mother  has  refused  to  acknowledge  her  own 
children.  It  is  only  when  social  movements  have  receded 
into  past  history  so  that  they  can  be  viewed  in  the  larger 
perspective  and  without  the  irritation  created  by  all  con- 
temporary disturbance  of  established  conditions,  that  the 
Church  with  pride  turns  around  to  claim  that  it  was  she  who 
abolished  slavery,  aroused  the  people  to  hberty,  and  emanci- 
pated woman. 

The  facts  of  history  are  so  clear  on  this  point  that  the 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  151 

indirectness  of  the  social  influence  of  Christianity  has  been 
set  up  as  a  kind  of  doctrine.  We  are  told  that  Christianity 
is  sure  'to  affect  society,^  but  that  Christianity  must  not  seek 
to  affect  it.  The  mission  of  the  Church  is  to  implant  the 
divine  life  in  the  souls  of  men,  and  from  these  regenerated 
individuals  forces  of  righteousness  will  silently  radiate,  and 
evil  customs  and  institutions  will  melt  away  without  any 
propaganda. 

That  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  important  means  of  social 
transformation.  Put  a  new  moral  standard  and  a  new  moral 
motive  into  a  human  heart,  and  it  will  unconsciously  affect  all 
it  touches.  A  Christian  woman  will  make  a  home  sweet  and 
Christian,  even  if  she  has  no  theory  about  Christianizing  the 
home-life.  But  would  it  not  be  more  effective  still  if  she 
added  the  conscious  purpose  to  make  her  home  a  little  king- 
dom of  God,  and  intelligently  set  herself  to  counteract  all 
customs  and  outside  influences  that  expressed  the  selfishness 
and  ostentation  and  gluttony  of  the  life  surrounding  her  home  ? 
If  a  result  gives  us  joy  and  pride  after  it  is  attained,  why 
should  it  not  be  our  conscious  object  before  it  is  attained? 
Why  should  the  instinctive  and  unpurposed  action  of  Christian 
men  be  more  effective  than  a  deeply  rooted  and  intelligent 
purpose?  Since  when  is  a  curved  and  circuitous  line  the 
shortest  distance  between  two  points  ?  Will  the  liquor  traffic  ^ 
disappear  if  we  say  nothing  about  it  ?  Will  the  atrocities  on  >^ 
the  Congo  cease  if  we  merely  radiate  goodness  from  our 
regenerate  souls? 

We  suspect  that  this  theory  was  devised  to  put  the  best  face 
on  an  uncomfortable  fact.  It  is  a  fact  that  there  has  been  a 
startling  absence  of  any  thorough  and  far-seeing  determina- 
tion or  effort  to  transform  and  Christianize  the  social  life  of 


r 


152  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

humanity.  But  that  lack  has  not  been  due  to  the  wise  self- 
restraint  of  the  Church,  which  knew  a  better  way,  but  to  a 
series  of  historical  causes  which  have  paralyzed  its  recon- 
structive purpose  and  power.  These  causes  I  shall  try  to  set 
forth  in  this  chapter  and  it  can  then  be  judged  whether  the 
past  failure  of  the  Church  to  undertake  the  reconstruction 
of  social  life  justifies  a  present  refusal  to  undertake  it  con- 
sciously. 

This  brief  survey  will  have  to  run  back  and  forth  over 
nineteen  centuries  of  Christian  history.  Its  brevity  will 
have  to  excuse  the  abruptness  and  the  lack  of  due  qualifica- 
tions in  many  of  the  statements. 

Impossibil-  It  is  correctly  asserted  that  the  apostles  undertook  no  social 
social  prop-  Propaganda.  Paul  held  no  antislavery  meetings,  and  Peter 
aganda  in  made  no  public  protest  against  the  organized  grafting  in  the 
tunes.  Roman  system  of  tax-farming.     Of  course  they  did  not. 

Even  the  most  ardent  Christian  socialist  of  our  day  would 
have  stepped  softly  if  he  had  been  in  their  place.  The  right 
of  public  agitation  was  very  limited  in  the  Roman  Empire. 
Any  attempt  to  arouse  the  people  against  the  oppression  of  the 
government  or  the  special  privileges  of  the  possessing  classes, 
would  have  been  choked  off  with  relentless  promptness.  If, 
for  instance,  any  one  had  been  known  to  sow  discontent  among 
the  vast  and  ever  threatening  slave  population,  —  which  was 
not  negro,  but  white,  —  he  would  have  had  short  shrift. 
Society  was  tensely  alert  against  any  possible  slave  rising.  If 
a  slave  killed  his  master,  the  law  provided  that  every  slave  of 
that  household  should  be  killed,  even  if  there  was  no  trace  of 
complicity.  Upper-class  philosophers  might  permit  them- 
selves very  noble  and  liberal  sentiments  only  because  there 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 53 

was  no  connection  between  them  and  the  masses,  and  their 
sentiments  ended  in  perfumed  smoke. 

Under  such  circumstances  any  prudent  man  will  husband 
his  chances  of  life  and  usefulness,  and  drop  the  seeds  of  truth 
warily.  If  the  convictions  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison  had 
burned  in  Paul,  we  should  probably  not  know  that  Paul  had 
ever  existed.  There  is  no  parallel  between  such  a  situation 
and  our  own  in  a  country  where  we  are  ourselves  the  citizen- 
kings,  and  where  the  right  of  moral  agitation  is  almost  un- 
limited. The  parallel  would  have  to  be  sought  with  American 
missionaries  working  among  the  Armenians  in  Turkey,  or  ^ 
with  evangelical  sectarians  in  Russia  before  the  present  revo-  v 
lution.  Our  missionaries  in  China  are  in  a  privileged  position, 
yet  they  have  to  let  official  corruption  alone  or  their  consuls 
are  Ukely  to  hear  from  the  mandarins. 

Paul  was  not  an  anti-slavery  man.     He  doubtless  realized  Postpone- 
the  oppressive  conditions  of  many  slaves,  just  as  we  recognize  Lord's  com- 
the  hard  lot  of  miners  or  oyster-dredgers.     But  to  his  lofty  ing. 
idealism  outward  conditions  were  almost  indifferent.    He  him- 
self bore  poverty  and  homelessness  almost  with  equanimity  for 
Christ's  sake.     Let  the  slave  realize  that  he  is  Christ's  free- 
man, and  he  can  hold  his  head  as  erect  as  any.^    This  is 
sublime,  but  it  is  too  rare  an  atmosphere  for  the  mass  of  men, 
and  even  the  few  can  maintain  such  victorious  elevation  of 
soul  only  under  the  tension  of  unusual  feelings  and  only  for  a 
hmited  time. 

Paul  and  the  entire  primitive  Church  were  under  such 
tension.  They  expected  the  very  speedy  coming  of  the 
Lord.     Paul  expected  that  this  event  would  signalize  the 

^  I  Corinthians  7.  17-24. 


154  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

transformation  and  spiritualization  of  all  the  material  world/ 
and  what  did  our  transient  earthly  troubles  matter  in  the 
face  of  so  tremendous  a  change  ?  Others,  as  we  have  seen/ 
expected  the  coming  of  the  Lord  to  usher  in  an  earthly  mil- 
lennium of  justice  and  happiness,  which  would  solve  all 
social  questions  in  one  blessed  catastrophe.  They  were  then 
in  the  same  position  as  those  revolutionary  socialists  who 
refuse  to  dabble  with  social  palliatives  because  the  people 
are  almost  on  the  point  of  seizing  control  of  all.  We  know 
now  that  the  Christians  of  the  first  century  were  at  the  be- 
ginning of  Christian  history;  they  thought  they  were  at  the 
end. 

This  expectation,  to  any  one  who  took  it  seriously,  affected 
all  relations  and  outlooks  on  life.  Paul  even  advised  against 
marriage  on  account  of  the  nearness  of  the  end  and  the 
upheavals  sure  to  precede  it.  He  counselled  an  attitude  of 
inner  detachment.  Let  those  who  had  wives  be  as  if  they 
/  had  none,  and  those  who  purchased  property  as  if  they  did  not 
'  own  it ;  let  those  who  had  dealings  with  the  world  make  them 
as  slight  as  possible ;  for  the  time  was  short,  and  the  present 
make-up  of  the  world  was  soon  to  pass  away.'  Given  that 
conviction  of  the  coming  end,  and  this  was  the  language  of  an 
heroic  soul.  Any  one  with  that  faith  would  be  morally  ab- 
solved from  entering  on  any  moral  crusade  that  would  take 
time.  But  without  that  honest  faith  the  same  attitude  would 
be  a  shirking  of  responsibihty.  If  a  man  spends  only  a 
single  night  in  a  shack  in  the  woods,  he  does  not  mind  if  the 
stars  shine  through  the  roof  or  the  rain  leaks  in,  for  in  the 
morning  he  will  strike  camp.     But  if  he  occupies  a  house 

•  I  Corinthians  15;  Romans  8.  '  i  Corinthians  7.  25-35. 

*  p.  103  ff. 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 55 

for  years  in  which  roof  and  drainage  are  defective,  and  if  his 
children  are  perpetually  sick  in  consequence,  it  is  criminal 
for  him  to  let  things  run  on  because  some  day  it  may  happen 
that  he  will  move. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  we   discussed    the  attitude  of  Hostility  to 
primitive   Christianity  to  the  Empire  and  the  civihzation  ^jj^  itT^^^^ 
organized  in  it/    We  saw  that  the  hope  of  the  Lord 's  coming  civilization, 
necessarily  involved  the  hope  that  the  Empire  and  its  social 
life  would  come  to  an  end.     The  feelings  inherited  from 
Judaism   and    its   apocalyptic   literature,    and   the   feelings 
generated  by  the  persecution  of  the  Christians,  united  in 
creating  a  clouded  atmosphere  of  fear  and  distrust  through 
which  imperial  Rome  loomed  threatening  and  detestable. 

This  feeling  received  a  strong  moral  reenforcement  by  the 
awakened  Christian  conscience  which  felt  keenly  the  immo- 
rality of  heathen  society,  the  lasciviousness  of  its  pleasures, 
the  unnaturalness  of  its  ornaments  and  luxuries,  the  greed  of 
its  traffic,  the  factiousness  and  hatred  prevalent  in  private  and 
pubHc  hfe.  How  could  the  ideals  of  life  which  they  carried  in 
their  hearts  be  realized  in  a  world  so  incompatible  with  them  ? 
How  could  a  social  life  so  fundamentally  wrong  be  recon- 
structed? Men  usually  undertake  a  hopeful  reformatory 
activity  only  if  betterment  is  somewhere  within  sight.  In 
some  of  our  cities  in  which  local  poUtics  seemed  bad  beyond 
remedy,  citizens  were  long  in  a  state  of  pessimistic  lethargy. 
Socialists  are  so  profoundly  convinced  of  the  hopeless  and 
fundamental  injustice  of  the  capitalistic  system  that  they  will 
cooperate  in  no  reform  which  is  simply  to  ameliorate  or  pro- 
long a  system  that  ought  to  cease.    Similarly  the  political  and 

*  p.  108  s. 


156  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

moral  outlook  of  Christians  on  the  world  about  them  was  so 
dark  and  hopeless  that  the  idea  of  a  moral  campaign  could 
hardly  have  occurred  to  them,  even  if  it  had  been  permitted, 
and  even  if  their  hope  of  God's  intervention  had  not  made 
their  efforts  seem  useless. 

This  moral  outlook  received  a  sinister  reenforcement 
by  the  religious  belief  prevailing  in  early  Christianity  that 
the  heathen  world  was  under  the  control  of  demon  pow- 
ers.^ 

This  was  the  common  belief  of  the  heathen  world  itself. 
Only  the  word  "demon"  did  not  have  the  exclusively  evil 
significance  which  it  has  with  us.  Their  demons  were  good, 
bad,  or  indifferent.  The  common  man  believed  himself 
surrounded  by  them  just  as  the  mediaeval  Christian  felt 
himself  protected  by  ministering  angels  and  saints,  or 
tempted  by  devils.  For  their  favor  the  Roman  merchant 
offered  gifts  and  prayers.  Against  their  anger  or  spite  the 
Greek  sailor  wore  his  amulets.  From  their  defilements  men 
sought  cleansing  in  the  ritual  of  the  heathen  "mysteries" 
and  the  prevalent  Oriental  cults.  For  the  educated  man, 
with  whom  the  conception  of  one  God  had  shouldered  aside 
the  belief  in  the  ancient  gods,  it  was  convenient  to  think  that 
the  traditional  gods  were  real  spiritual  powers,  though  of  an 
inferior  rank. 

The  Christians  simply  retained  this  common  belief  of  the 
second  century,  but  by  a  process  which  has  often  been  re- 
peated in  the  history  of  religion  this  many-hued  world  of 
spirits  was  suddenly  all  dyed  in  uniform  black.     They  were 

*  Harnack,  "Expansion  of  Christianity,"  Bk.  II,  Chap.  II,  has  an 
Excursus  about  this  belief  and  its  influence  on  ancient  Christianity.  Many 
of  the  most  interesting  passages  in  the  Fathers  are  quoted  there. 


THE    WORK   OF    SOCIAL    RECONSTRUCTION  157 

parts  of  that  Satanic  kingdom  which  opposes  God  and  his 
kingdom.  They  were  not  figments  of  the  imagination,  but 
real  and  terrible  seducing  spirits  who  had  for  ages  enthralled 
the  world  and  persuaded  men  to  offer  them  gifts  and  sacrifices. 
Whatever  was  good  in  pre-Christian  civilization,  or  whatever 
was  similar  in  heathen  ritual  to  Christian  rites  or  institutions, 
was  a  counterfeit  devised  in  advance  by  the  demons  in  order 
to  thwart  Christianity  which  threatened  to  rob  them  of  their 
power.  It  is  necessary  to  read  the  early  Church  Fathers  and 
apologists  to  realize  how  fundamental  this  belief  was  in  their 
theology  and  in  their  interpretation  of  history  and  contem- 
porary life.  A  theology  like  ours,  with  no  demons  in  it, 
would  have  seemed  to  Justin  Martyr  or  Cyprian  to  knock 
the  bottom  out  of  the  Christian  faith. 

But  if  heathen  religion  was  the  serv^ice  of  demons,  all 
heathen  life  was  under  their  control,  for  all  heathen  life  was 
woven  through  with  religious  acts  and  ceremonies.  Every 
official  act  of  State,  every  military  ceremony,  every  public  or 
private  festivity,  was  connected  with  sacrifices,  libations,  or 
prayers.  No  Christian  could  take  part  in  them  without  defil- 
ing himself  with  the  deadly  sin  of  idolatry.  The  only  course 
open  to  Christians  was  to  diminish  their  points  of  contact  with 
heathen  society  and  constitute  a  little  social  world  within  the 
world.  Such  a  mingling  in  the  common  life  as  an  effort  at 
social  reconstruction  would  involve,  was  quite  out  of  the 
question.  The  best  social  service  which  the  Church  could 
render  to  the  heathen  world  was  to  counteract  and  break  the 
power  of  the  demons. 

The  causes  already  enumerated  were  on  the  whole  confined 
to  early  Christianity.     The  State  was  hostile,  and  any  moral 


158 


CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 


The  limita- 
tions of 
primitive 
Christianity 
and  their 
perpetua- 
tion. 


campaign  against  social  wrongs  was  impossible.  The  Lord 
was  coming  to  usher  in  the  new  era,  and  any  human  effort  for 
a  slow  amelioration  was  needless.  The  heathen  world  was  so 
corrupt,  so  hostile,  and  so  penetrated  by  demon  powers,  that 
any  hope  of  changing  its  evil  life  was  paralyzed  by  the  very 
magnitude  of  the  task  involved.  Thus  in  spite  of  the  power- 
ful social  impetus  residing  in  primitive  Christianity  such  a 
process  of  conscious  moral  reconstruction  of  society  as  we 
conceive  to-day  was  both  theoretically  and  practically  out  of 
the  question  in  the  first  three  centuries. 

Moreover,  these  early  Christians  were  subject  to  the  same 
limitations  of  human  nature  to  which  we  all  are  prone.  They, 
too,  were  creatures  of  custom.  Before  slavery  was  abolished 
in  our  country,  there  were  millions  of  genuine  Christians, 
honestly  willing  to  see  and  do  the  right  in  other  matters,  to 
whom  it  seemed  a  preposterous  proposition  that  slavery  is 
incompatible  with  Christianity.  To  them  it  was  a  necessary 
and  fundamental  human  institution,  like  the  family  or  the 
school.  To-day  there  are  very  few  Christians  who  realize 
that  it  is  a  crying  wrong  to  hold  land  idle  for  speculation  in 
cities  where  men's  lungs  are  rotting  away,  overgrown  with 
tuberculosis  bacilli  for  lack  of  air ;  few  who  realize  that  it  is  a 
flat  denial  of  Christianity  to  take  advantage  of  the  needs  of 
your  fellow-man  to  buy  his  labor  cheaply  or  sell  him  your 
goods  dearly.  These  things  seem  to  us  a  necessary  and 
inevitable  part  of  the  structure  of  society.  If,  therefore,  the 
early  Christians  accepted  the  universal  institution  of  slavery 
as  part  of  the  social  universe;  if  it  was  centuries  before  we 
hear  any  straight  declaration  against  the  principle  of  slavery 
in  the  Church ;  and  if  the  Church  itself  became  a  great  slave- 
owner in  the  later  days  of  its  wealth — need  we  be  surprised 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL    RECONSTRUCTION  1 59 

who  have  had  nineteen  centuries  of  Christian  influences  upon 
us  and  who  are  still  so  blind  to  wrong? 

Moreover,  in  the  early  generations  the  churches  were 
mainly  composed  of  slaves  and  poor  people  whose  minds 
were  stunted  by  toil  and  lack  of  culture.  The  physical  fear 
of  persecution,  the  sense  of  social  ostracism,  the  superstitious 
fear  of  demon  powers,  the  self-righteous  pride  and  narrow- 
ness inseparable  from  sectarian  religious  life,  combined  to  shut 
them  up  in  their  own  organizations  and  to  rob  them  of  the 
wide  and  free  outlook  on  human  life.  It  is  quite  possible  for 
a  flower-pot  or  a  religious  body  to  be  exceedingly  narrow,  and 
yet  to  harbor  the  germinating  seed  of  something  very  great. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  convincing  testimonies  to  the  Christian 
religion  that  within  such  human  environment  it  was  able 
to  generate  such  religious  thought  and  energy. 

It  was  thus  entirely  natural  and  excusable  if  the  recon- 
structive purpose  inherent  in  Christianity  did  not  find  its 
largest  application  in  the  primitive  beginnings  of  Christianity. 
It  would  be  miraculous  if  it  had.  But  the  harm  was  done 
when  subsequent  generations  took  this  failure  as  an  excuse  or 
even  as  a  command  for  similar  inaction.  Since  the  end  of  the 
second  century  "apostolic"  became  the  decisive  word  in  the 
Church.  Whatever  the  apostles  had  done  or  not  done  was 
binding  precedent.  In  later  times  the  opinions  of  the  great 
Fathers  received  a  similar  authority,  which  almost  throttled 
free  initiative.  Human  life  is  always  imitative  and  there- 
fore conservative.  But  religion,  by  the  very  reverence  which 
makes  it  noble,  intensifies  the  conservative  instinct.  It 
embalms  even  insignificant  usages  and  ideas  and  gives  them 
binding  authority.  Thus  the  attitude  of  the  primitive 
Church  toward  society  tended  to  perpetuate  itself  when  all 


l6o  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  causes  which  had  created  that  attitude  had  long  dis- 
appeared. Paul  lived  under  a  hostile  government  and  in 
view  of  the  speedy  end  of  the  world.  We  live  under  our  own 
government,  free  to  think  and  speak  as  we  will;  we  look 
backward  on  nineteen  centuries  of  Christian  history,  and 
we  look  forward  to  an  indefinite  continuance  of  the  present 
world.  Yet  it  still  passes  as  a  clinching  argument  for  Chris- 
tian indifference  to  social  questions  that  Paul  never  started  a 
good  government  campaign.  "When  two  do  the  same  thing, 
it  is  not  the  same."  We  cling  to  the  letter  of  primitive 
Christianity  and  are  false  to  its  spirit.  We  have  turned  the 
eagle-minded  Paul,  one  of  the  greatest  champions  of  free- 
dom and  progress  in  all  history,  into  a  personified  code  of  law 
and  precedent  that  bids  us  ever  remain  where  he  stood.  We 
have  thrust  the  steel  driving-rod  of  an  old  locomotive  between 
the  spokes  of  a  new  locomotive.  There  is  the  grim  humor 
of  human  life ! 

The  other-        There  is  another  line  of  causes  which  set  in  very  early,  but 
^f"ch^^"^^^    which  did  not  come  to  their  full  force  in  primitive  Chris- 
tianity, tianity.     They  swayed  that  "cathoHc"   Christianity  which 
developed  out  of  primitive   Christianity  about   the   end  of 
the  second  century  and  which  ruled  with  unbroken  power 
till  the  Reformation. 

We  have  seen  that  the  ancient  Hebrew  religion  had  been 
for  this  present  life.  The  hope  of  blessedness  or  the  fear  of 
punishment  in  a  life  after  death  plays  no  appreciable  part  in 
Old  Testament  religion.  The  prophetic  insistence  on  pres- 
ent social  righteousness  and  the  hope  of  a  Messianic  reign  on 
earth  developed  in  a  national  religion  devoted  to  the  present 
life. 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  l6l 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Graeco-Roman  world  there  was 
an  intense  desire  for  the  future  Hfe.  A  great  revival  of 
religion  had  begun  in  the  pagan  world  before  the  Christian 
era  and  continued  for  several  centuries  to  gather  strength. 
The  deep  interest  in  religious  philosophy,  the  popularity  of 
the  "mysteries,"  the  eagerness  with  which  old  Oriental 
religions  were  welcomed  in  the  West,  and  the  swiftness  with 
which  religions  made  headway,  were  all  symptoms  of  this 
new  religious  awakening.  The  chief  hope  held  out  by 
all  these  religious  movements  was  the  atonement  and  puri- 
fication of  sin  and  the  attainment  of  immortal  life. 

It  was  natural  that  when  Christianity  spread  in  the  pagan 
world  that  men  should  seize  that  part  of  its  rich  and  varied 
contents  which  most  appealed  to  their  desires,  and  em- 
phasize it  to  the  exclusion  of  others.  They  saw  in  Christ 
the  redeemer  from  earthliness.  By  his  incarnation,  his  death 
and  resurrection  he  had  implanted  potential  immortality  in 
the  human  race.  By  baptism  the  immortal  life  could  be 
imparted  to  the  believer;  by  the  eucharist,  that  "medicine  of 
immortality, "  and  by  the  mortification  of  the  body,  it  could 
be  nourished  and  strengthened  to  the  final  triumph  over  all 
that  clogged  it.  Nearly  all  the  early  Fathers  wrote  on  the 
resurrection.  The  gift  of  immortality  was  the  great  theme  of 
early  Greek  theology.  The  Nicene  Council  was  not  merely 
the  triumph  of  a  christological  formula,  but  of  that  concep- 
tion of  Christianity  which  made  it  primarily  redemption 
from  death  and  impartation  of  immortality.-  The  prayers 
for  the  dead  and  to  the  dead,  the  festivals  of  the  martyrs 
and  saints,  the  poetic  speculation  on  heaven  and  hell  and 
purgatory,  the  desire  for  a  blessed  death  with  all  "the 
consolations  of  religion,"  the   apparatus  presented  in  the 


V 


( 


1 62  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

sacraments  of  the  Church  to  attain  security  from  hell 
and  early  release  from  purgatory,  the  churchyards  crowd- 
ing up  to  the  churches  and  into  them  —  all  these  testify 
to  the  place  which  the  future  world  held  in  the  thoughts  of 
ancient  and  mediaeval  Christianity, 

But  as  the  eternal  life  came  to  the  front  in  Christian  hope, 
the  kingdom  of  God  receded  to  the  background,  and  with 
it  went  much  of  the  social  potency  of  Christianity.  The 
kingdom  of  God  was  a  social  and  collective  hope  and  it  was 
for  this  earth.  The  eternal  life  was  an  individualistic  hope, 
and  it  was  not  for  this  earth.  The  kingdom  of  God  involved 
the  social  transformation  of  humanity.  The  hope  of  eternal 
life,  as  it  was  then  held,  was  the  desire  to  escape  from  this 
world  and  be  done  with  it.  The  kingdom  was  a  revolu- 
tionary idea;    eternal  life  was  an  ascetic  idea. 

We  modem  men,  too,  believe  in  eternal  life,  but  the  asceti- 
cism is  almost  drained  out  of  it.  We  hold  that  this  life  is 
good  and  the  future  life  will  be  still  better.  We  feel  that  we 
must  live  robustly  now  and  do  the  work  God  has  given  us  to 
do,  and  at  death  we  shall  pass  to  a  higher  world  in  which  we 
shall  serve  him  in  still  higher  ways.  But  in  former  stages  of 
Christianity  the  feeling  was  rather  that  this  is  an  evil  world 
from  which  only  death  can  free  us :  at  the  best  a  discipline  to 
prepare  us  for  the  heavenly  life ;  at  the  worst  a  snare  to  cheat 
us  of  it.  The  body  is  a  sepulchre ;  the  world  a  prison ;  from 
both  the  soul  hopes  to  escape.  The  heaven-born  spirit 
longs  for  emancipation  from  the  grossness  of  matter. 

This  dualism  of  spirit  and  matter  was  not  derived  from 
the  teaching  of  Jesus.  It  was  in  the  intellectual  atmosphere 
of  the  day  part  of  the  general  spiritual  equipment  of  the 
times.     Platonic  and  Stoic  philosophy  taught  it.     It  was  the 


THE    WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 63 

strongest  religious  ingredient  in  Gnosticism,  in  Neo-Platonism, 
and  all  the  religious  movements  of  that  age.  It  was  inevitable 
that  Christianity,  both  in  its  theology  and  its  popular  reli- 
gious feelings,  should  be  deeply  affected  by  it.  But  such 
a  conception  of  present  life  and  future  destiny  offered  no 
motive  for  an  ennobling  transformation  of  the  present  life. 
Why  should  Christians  labor  to  make  this  present  life  just 
and  beautiful  when  by  its  very  nature  it  was  sensual  and 
debasing?  To  make  this  life  sweet  and  attractive  would 
only  rivet  the  chains  which  the  soul  should  long  to  strip  off, 
and  would  quench  that  longing  for  heaven  which  was  the 
mark  of  earnest  religion.  It  is  significant  that  those  Church 
Fathers  who  brought  the  eternal  life  to  the  front  in  the 
thought  of  the  Church,  either  unconsciously  or  consciously 
parted  company  with  the  millennial  hope.^ 

The  hymns  of  the  Church  are  like  an  auriferous  sand-bed 
in  which  the  intenser  religious  feelings  of  past  generations  have 
been  deposited.  They  perpetuate  what  would  otherwise  be 
most  fugitive :  the  religious  emotions.  If  any  one  will  look 
over  either  the  standard  church  hymnals  or  the  popular 
revival  collections,  he  will  find  very  few  hymns  expressing  the 
desire  for  a  purer  and  diviner  life  of  humanity  on  earth.  So 
far  as  I  have  been  able  to  see,  those  hymns  which  have  some- 
thing of  the  ring  of  the  social  hope  are  either  re-expressions 
of  Hebrew  hymns,  or  hymns  about  the  millennial  coming  of 
Christ,  or  patriotic  hymns,  or  foreign  missionary  hymns. 
From  these  four  significant  sources  some  joy  of  the  social 
hope  has  streamed  into  Christian  hymnology.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  hymns  expressing  the  yearning  of  the  soul  for  the 
blessed  life  in  the  world  to  come  are  beyond  computation. 

*  Irenaeus  unconsciously ;  Clement  of  Alexandria  and  Origen  consciously. 


164  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  other-worldliness  of  Christians  indirectly  did  affect 
social  life  for  good.  The  fear  of  eternal  punishment,  the 
hope  of  eternal  reward,  the  prospect  of  facing  the  great  Judge 
of  all  things,  held  many  a  coarse  nature  from  evil  and  to 
justice  and  mercy,  who  might  not  have  done  the  right  for 
the  right's  sake  or  through  any  higher  motive.  It  helped 
to  sensitize  the  conscience  of  the  Christian  nations  up  to  a 
certain  point.  But  that  only  confirms  our  general  proposition, 
that  the  social  effects  hitherto  produced  by  Christianity  have 
been  produced  indirectly  as  by-products,  and  that  the  main 
current  of  its  power  has  been  deflected  from  the  task  of 
Christianizing  social  life. 

The  ascetic  The  other-worldliness  of  early  Christianity  was  only  one 
tendency.  aspect  of  its  general  ascetic  view  of  life.  When  ascetic  piety 
turned  its  face  to  the  future,  it  longed  for  complete  release 
from  the  world  and  the  body,  and  for  the  bliss  of  pure  spirit- 
uahty  in  heaven.  -When  it  turned  its  face  to  present  duties 
and  relations,  it  sought  to  lessen  the  contact  with  the  world 
and  to  wear  thin  the  body,  in  order  to  weaken  the  hold  of  the 
sensuous  and  material  over  the  soul,  to  enjoy  some  foretaste 
of  the  rapturous  contemplation  in  heaven,  and  to  prepare 
the  spirit  for  its  final  victory  and  escape.  This  attitude  of 
mind  was  common  to  all  earnest  religious  movements  of  the 
ancient  world.  Christian  asceticism  was  not  Christian;  it 
V  was  only  a  Christian  modification  of  a  general  spiritual  drift 
in  contemporary  life.  All  these  movements  in  some  measure 
identified  evil  with  matter.  The  flesh  that  envelops  the  soul 
is  the  seat  of  evil ;  hence  it  must  be  opposed  and  worn  down. 
The  world  with  its  glamour  and  entanglements  is  a  kind  of 
larger  physical  integument,  enchaining  the  soul  in  material 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  165 

and  temporal  interests ;  the  less  of  it,  the  better  for  the  soul. 
The  spirit  that  desires  emancipation  must  not  only  avoid 
excess  and  wrongful  pleasure,  but  cut  down  all  satisfaction  of 
the  natural  desires  to  a  minimum.  The  perfect  Hfe  would  be 
the  contradiction  of  nature. 

The  sexual  instinct  is  the  most  insistent,  powerful,  and  -C?^^*^ 
intimate  form  in  which  the  soul  encounters  the  power  of  the 
material  life  and  the  attractiveness  of  the  world.  Therefore 
ascetic  religion  turned  against  sexual  desire  as  its  chief  enemy. 
Its  fight  against  sexual  evils  is  one  of  the  Church's  chief  titles 
to  honor.  It  was  a  fight  against  tremendous  odds  of  heredi- 
tary abnormal  passions,  vicious  customs  and  opinions,  and 
the  deposit  of  centuries  of  sensuality  in  literature,  art,  and 
religion.  The  Church  branded  all  sexual  intercourse  outside 
of  marriage  as  mortal  sin,  in  man  as  well  as  in  woman,  and  so 
protected  the  happiness  of  the  family  and  the  most  impor- 
tant right  of  woman.  It  stood  against  concubinage  and  the 
divorce  evil  of  the  ancient  world.  Its  influence  on  legisla- 
tion in  the  Roman  Empire  was  stronger  in  this  domain  of  life 
than  in  any  other.  ^ 

But  this  insistence  on  personal  purity  lost  much  of  its 
social  value  by  its  disparagement  of  the  sexual  life  in  general. 
Marriage,  too,  was  regarded  by  many  of  the  early  church 
teachers  as  a  lower  mioral  condition,  a  relation  necessarily 
involving  physical  defilement,  a  compromise  with  the  fallen 
life  of  humanity,  a  concession  to  the  weakness  of  the  flesh.  It 
was  not  a  relation  good  in  itself,  but  simply  a  preventive  of 
licentiousness  needed  by  the  weak.  Blessed  were  those  who 
did  not  need  it.  Since  the  second  century  the  Church  honored 
voluntary  virginity  in  man  and  woman.     For  a  long  time  it 

»  See  Brace,  "  Gesta  Christi,"  Chaps.  III-IV. 


1 66  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

frowned  on  a  second  marriage  as  a  blemish  on  Christian 
character.  Men  who  were  already  in  the  bonds  of  marriage 
might  become  priests,  but  none  who  was  already  in  holy 
orders  should  descend  to  marry.  Of  its  higher  churchmen  it 
early  began  to  demand  a  life  of  abstinence,  even  if  they  were 
married.  Finally  celibacy  was  demanded  of  all  priests  in 
the  Western  Church.  But  the  moral  demands  imposed  on 
the  clergy  as  a  law  were  imposed  on  all  men  as  an  ideal, 
especially  after  monasticism  captured  the  heart  of  the  Church 
from  the  fourth  century  onward.  Not  only  the  young  re- 
mained unmarried,  but  many  left  their  families  to  join  the 
"angelic  choirs"  of  the  ascetic.  Women  handed  their 
children  over  to  churches  or  monasteries  and  dedicated  them- 
selves to  hohness.  That  enthusiastic  propagandist  of  monk- 
ery, St.  Jerome,  said,  "Though  your  mother  with  hair  un- 
bound and  garments  torn  point  to  the  breasts  that  nourished 
you,  and  though  your  father  lie  on  the  threshold,  tread  over 
him  with  dry  eyes  and  take  the  flag  of  Christ,"  that  is, 
become  a  monk.^  "To  be  converted  to  God"  came  to  mean 
entering  a  monastery.  Even  Chrysostom,  the  sensible,  pic- 
tures the  model  husband  as  the  one  who  lives  almost  like  a 
monk. 

Now,  marriage  is  the  fundamental  social  relation.  The 
family  is  the  social  cell.  It  is  society  in  miniature.  If  this 
was  the  attitude  of  ascetic  Christianity  toward  the  most 
natural  and  most  loving  of  all  social  institutions,  what  chance 
of  proper  treatment  did  the  other  social  relations  have  ?  Of 
course  for  the  majority  of  men  the  common  sense  of  nature 
was  fortunately  stronger  than  any  ideal  motives  which  religion 
could  marshal  to  thwart  nature.     They  continued  to  marry 

*  Epistle  14,  2. 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   EECONSTRUCTION  167 

and  to  beget  children  and  be  happy.  But  with  such  views 
of  the  perfect  Christian  life,  it  would  be  with  a  feeling  either 
of  actual  sin  or  at  least  of  falling  short  of  the  highest  life.  It 
is  true  the  Church  in  many  ways  took  the  family  hfe  under 
its  special  care.  It  made  marriage  a  religious  ceremony  and 
declared  it  a  sacrament.  And  yet  marriage  continued  to  be  a 
second-best  condition,  and  in  that  atmosphere  a  true  Chris- 
tianizing of  even  that  simplest  social  relation  was  hardly 
possible.  It  was  one  of  the  greatest  social  services  of  the 
Reformation  that  it  broke  with  the  ascetic  ideal  so  far  as 
marriage  was  concerned,  and  ranked  the  married  hfe  as 
higher  than  the  unmarried.  The  Catholic  Church  still  theo- 
retically views  voluntary  celibacy  as  the  flower  of  virtue,  but 
practically  Catholics  have  shared  with  Protestants  in  the 
emancipation  from  the  ascetic  ideal,  which  was  originally  due 
to  non-Christian  influences,  but  which  has  so  long  been  able 
to  pose  as  almost  the  essence  of  Christian  morahty. 

The  attractiveness  of  this  present  world  reaches  us  mainly 
through  two  channels,  —  the  family  and  property.  The 
family  comprises  the  people  who  are  dear  to  us,  and  property 
the  things  that  are  dear  to  us.  Asceticism  turned  its  vigor 
against  both.  If  we  are  to  be  emancipated  from  the  world, 
the  hold  of  the  property  instinct  must  be  broken.  Under  the 
pressure  of  the  monastic  movement  men  left  their  property 
altogether,  and  dedicated  themselves  to  a  life  of  poverty. 
The  more  absolute  the  poverty,  the  holier  the  monk  or  the 
order.  For  those  who  remained  in  their  family  and  calling, 
the  ideal  was  fundamentally  the  same.  Let  them  at  least 
limit  their  needs  and  give  away  the  surplus  saved. 

Under  the  stimulus  of  this  ascetic  distrust  of  property 
very  large  amounts  were  set  free  for  charity.     In  fact,  the 


l68  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

charitable  activity  of  the  Church  was  amazing.  For  sheer 
wiUingness  to  give,  modem  Christianity  cannot  match  its 
beneficence  with  ascetic  Christianity.  But  this  giving  was 
not  essentially  a  social  conflict  with  the  moral  evils  of  pauper- 
ism, but  a  religious  conflict  with  the  moral  evil  of  the  love  of 
property.  The  aim  was  not  primarily  to  lift  the  poor  recipient 
to  social  health,  but  to  discipline  the  soul  of  the  giver.  The 
Church  Fathers  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  condemned 
private  property  with  such  vigor  that  they  have  often  been 
classed  as  communists.  But  they  took  this  ground,  not 
because  they  saw  how  valuable  for  the  moral  life  a  fair 
diffusion  of  property  would  be,  but  because  they  feared  the 
seductive  charm  of  property.  They  never  proposed  a  com- 
munistic production  of  more  wealth,  but  only  called  on  men 
to  share  what  wealth  they  had.  If  all  had  obeyed  them,  the 
productive  capital  of  society  would  have  been  turned  in  for 
consumption,  and  society  would  have  eaten  its  own  head 
ofiF. 

The  zeal  for  giving  evoked  by  ascetic  self-discipline  was 
greatly  reenforced  by  the  desire  to  gain  merit.  Asceticism 
and  the  idea  of  religious  merit  are  very  closely  connected.  If 
the  Christian  who  enjoys  his  family  and  property  can  be  saved 
and  get  to  heaven,  the  man  who,  for  the  love  of  God,  strips 
himself  of  family  and  property  surely  must  have  something 
more  than  mere  salvation.  He  would  have  a  surplus  with 
God,  with  which  he  could  either  pay  up  the  debts  contracted 
through  former  sins  or  which  he  could  turn  over  to  the  gen- 
eral treasure  of  merit  on  which  the  weak  and  sinful  could 
bank.  It  was  one  of  the  most  important  contributions  of 
Paul  to  spiritual  religion  that  he  denied  utterly  that  man  could 
earn  merit  with  God,  but  threw  him  naked  and  humble  on 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 69 

the  mercy  of  God.  When  the  capitalistic  impulse  tries  to 
accumulate  a  cash  balance  in  heaven  and  do  business  with 
the  Lord  on  a  debit  and  credit  basis,  commercialism  poisons 
religion. 

The  desire  to  discipline  the  soul  and  the  desire  to  win 
merit  united  in  making  men  give  large  amounts  in  charity,  but 
they  also  vitiated  the  social  effectiveness  of  the  giving.  The 
social  effect  was  subsidiary.  The  giving  was  the  main  thing, 
not  the  help.  Almsgiving  was  the  best  means  of  penitence, 
the  most  effective  bath  of  the  soul  next  to  baptism  —  a  means 
of  holiness  even  stronger  than  prayer  or  fasting.  The  poor, 
through  whom  this  virtue  was  acquired,  were  "the  treasure  of 
the  Church,"  part  of  its  equipment,  a  kind  of  gymnastic 
apparatus  on  which  the  givers  increased  their  moral  muscle. 
Hence  begging  was  ennobled.  It  became  a  profession  with 
its  own  class  spirit.  The  mendicant  orders  almost  glorified 
it.  Since  the  effect  produced  by  the  alms  was  a  secondary 
matter,  men  preferred  to  turn  their  alms  over  to  the  Church 
to  be  used  at  its  discretion ;  their  part  was  done  with  the  giv- 
ing. There  were  many  organizations  to  elicit  gifts,  but  no 
systematic  organization  of  charity  for  the  purpose  of  aboHsh- 
ing  pauperism. 

Of  course  a  great  deal  of  good  was  done.  Human  kind- 
liness and  good  sense  were  never  wholly  paralyzed.  The 
touch  of  brotherly  love  was  warm  in  spite  of  all  calculations  of 
merit  to  be  earned.  But  it  is  clear  that  the  religion  which 
eUcited  the  charity,  at  the  same  time  thwarted  it,  and  that 
under  these  religious  conceptions  a  sane  Christianization  of 
social  relations  would  never  be  undertaken.  As  .  long  as 
asceticism  ruled  in  Christianity,  the  force  of  religion  was 
exerted  to  hft  men  out  of  their  social  relations,  instead  of 


170  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

bringing  them  into  normal  relations.  It  would  seek  to  sup- 
press the  natural  instincts  instead  of  finding  the  right  and 
happy  channels  for  them. 

Monas-  It  is  a  remarkable  demonstration  of  the  incurably  social 

ticism.  nature  both  of  man  and  of  Christianity  that  when  religion 

sought  most  earnestly  to  escape  from  social  life,  it  turned  its 
hand  once  more  to  build  up  a  true  social  life.  Every  mon- 
astery proposed  to  be  an  ideal  community. 

The  idea  that  society  and  the  State  were  ruled  by  demons 
and  were  anti-Christian  in  their  character,  was  abandoned  as  a 
matter  of  course  when  the  Church  was  supported  by  the  State 
and  society  became  Christian  in  name.  But  this  primitive 
pessimism  was  not  supplanted  by  any  true  conception  of  this 
world  as  the  very  place  in  which  the  kingdom  of  God  was  to  be 
built  up  by  making  all  natural  relations  normal  and  holy. 
The  older  view  was  replaced  by  another  pessimistic  amalga- 
mation of  Greek  philosophy  and  biblical  ideas. 

Philosophy  had  speculated  about  the  original  condition  of 
humanity  as  a  state  of  freedom  and  equality.  The  Bible 
told  of  a  happy  state  in  paradise  before  man  fell.  Man  then 
must  have  been  by  nature  free  from  those  evils  from  which 
ascetic  piety  now  painfully  strove  to  free  him  once  more. 
Originally  man  was  free  from  sexual  desire  and  from  covet- 
ousness ;  there  was  no  family  nor  private  property,  no  com- 
mercial machinery  for  money-getting,  no  difference  of  rich 
and  poor,  or  of  master  and  slave.  The  ideal  life,  then,  would 
consist  in  the  abandonment  of  all  these  social  institutions. 
Their  abolition  was  out  of  the  question  for  the  mass  of  fallen 
humanity,  but  the  chosen  few  at  least  could  leave  the  sinful 
social  life  and  create  a  little  world  apart  in  which  they  would 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  171 

live  out  the  holy  life  which  God  originally  ordained  for  man. 
These  social  ideas  blended  with  the  ascetic  desire  for  self- 
discipline  to  create  the  monastic  community.  Here  the 
foundations  of  civil  society,  the  family,  property  and  worldly 
profession,  were  annihilated,  and  here  the  life  of  Christian 
perfection  was  to  be  lived. 

Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  an  incalculable  quantity  of 
moral  and  spiritual  energy  was  put  into  the  organization  and 
reformation  of  monastic  communities.  Whoever  desired  to 
live  a  consecrated  Christian  Hfe,  became  a  monk  as  a  matter 
of  course.  Every  monastic  order  was  a  society  for  Christian 
endeavor.  The  noblest  and  greatest  minds  spent  themselves 
in  summoning  men  to  a  still  higher  type  of  ascetic  community 
life,  or  in  repairing  these  fragile  human  edifices  which  were 
built  on  a  contradiction  of  nature  and  persisted  in  obeying 
the  law  of  gravitation  and  sliding  down  to  ruin.  In  turn,  all 
the  great  moral  movements  of  mediaeval  Christianity  were  led 
by  monks  and  fostered  in  the  monasteries  where  all  the 
idealists  gathered.  In  ever  widening  circles  the  monastic 
ideal  laid  hold  of  men.  The  mendicant  orders  immensely  in- 
creased the  numbers,  because  they  made  the  support  of  the 
monks  so  cheap.  And  beyond  the  regular  orders  were  the 
lay  brotherhoods,  the  members  of  which  approximated  the 
monastic  life  as  nearly  as  their  family  and  calling  permitted. 

Monasticism  was  rich  in  beneficent  social  effects.  Many 
of  the  monks  were  sympathetic  and  wise  counsellors  and 
friends  of  the  people.  Every  monastery  was  a  centre  for 
charitable  aid  of  travellers  and  the  poor.  The  monasteries 
founded  in  wild  and  desert  districts  became  pioneers  of  civ- 
ilization, models  of  better  agricultural  methods  and  simple 
horticultural  experiment  stations. 


172  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

But  they  rendered  this  social  aid  without  any  intention  to 
reconstitute  the  social  community  about  them.  That  was 
impossible.  If  any  one  desired  to  live  in  a  really  Christian 
community,  let  him  come  into  the  monastery.  The  monks 
aided  the  poor  and  sick,  because  that  was  part  of  ascetic 
Christianity ;  in  doing  so  they  gave  away  the  property  of  the 
order,  and  giving  was  salutary.  They  preferred  the  barren 
and  wild  places  for  their  monasteries,  not  in  the  spirit  of  the 
modem  missionary  or  the  social  settlement,  because  they  were 
most  needed  there,  but  because  they  were  farthest  away  from 
human  society  and  therefore  nearest  to  God,  The  Irish 
monks,  for  instance,  first  settled  the  lonely  islands  in  their 
rivers ;  then  the  islands  of  the  sea ;  then  the*  strange  countries 
with  alien  tongue — all  to  be  pilgrims  for  Christ.  Then  in- 
cidentally they  came  in  contact  with  the  inhabitants  of  these 
foreign  countries  and  became  missionaries  by  force  of  their 
humane  Christianity  and  in  spite  of  their  ascetic  Christianity. 
If  the  monks  became  pioneers  of  agriculture,  it  was  not  be- 
cause they  were  anxious  to  enrich  the  peasants.  They  had  to 
work  to  get  a  living  for  their  monastic  colony  and  the  poor 
supported  by  it,  and  to  be  independent  of  the  world.  More- 
over, work  was  a  salutary  means  of  subduing  the  sensual 
desires  begotten  by  idleness,  and  of  giving  the  vagrant 
thoughts  a  definite  task.  Usually  they  selected  trades  that 
were  compatible  with  meditation  and  that  did  not  minister  to 
luxury.  But  since  they  were  a  community  working  under  a 
single  management  and  having  a  continuous  economic  life, 
they  had  division  of  labor,  gradual  accumulation  of  wealth 
and  improvement  of  methods,  and  contact  with  the  experience 
and  resources  of  distant  regions.  Thus  the  latent  socialism 
in  their  community  life  worked  a  blessing  in  spite  of  their 


THE    WORK    OF    SOCIAL    RECONSTRUCTION  1 73 

ascetic  religion.  In  fact,  every  monastic  body  was  a  com- 
munistic colony.  That  was  an  essential  part  of  its  attempt 
to  revive  the  apostolic  and  ideal  life. 

Now  these  institutions,  founded  usually  with  noble  devo- 
tion to  God,  with  an  honest  desire  to  live  the  perfect  life, 
carrying  with  them  so  many  admirable  effects  for  the  religious 
and  social  life  of  men,  were  nevertheless  one  potent  cause  for 
the  failure  of  Christianity  to  undertake  its  reconstructive 
social  mission. 

The  finest  and  most  elevated  natures  were  picked  out  of 
society  as  by  a  spiritual  magnet  and  placed  in  communities  by 
themselves,  isolated  from  common  society.  The  energy  which 
they  ought  to  have  devoted  to  making  society  normal,  they 
employed  in  making  themselves  abnormal.  The  power  that 
might  have  lifted  mankind  up,  was  used  in  wearing  them- 
selves down.  The  good  men  among  the  monks  served 
mankind  even  as  monks;  but  would  men  of  that  stamp  not 
have  served  it  if  they  had  remained  in  the  natural  bonds  of 
family  and  neighborhood  ? 

When  the  monastic  movement  first  swept  over  the  ancient 
Church,  it  is  certain  that  many  went  out  to  the  hermit  colo- 
nies at  least  partly  because  they  were  weary  of  the  burdens 
of  taxation  and  service  imposed  by  the  tottering  Empire,  and 
of  the  lack  of  freedom  that  hemmed  all  men  in.  They  shook 
off  the  burdens  of  civilization  at  a  time  when  civilization  was 
desperately  in  need  of  all  its  human  resources,  and  especially 
of  all  moral  energy.  They  necessarily  unloaded  on  those  who 
remained  the  burdens  which  they  refused  to  carry  longer. 
Thus  a  social  organism,  wasted  by  disease  and  attacked  by 
external  dangers,  was  further  bled  of  some  of  its  best  blood 
corpuscles.     Ascetic  and  monastic  Christianity  contributed 


174  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

not  a  little  to  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  destruc- 
tion of  ancient  civilization. 

During  the  Middle  Ages  some  of  the  best  organizing  ability, 
which  might  have  sufficed  to  meet  the  social  anarchy  and 
disorganization  of  society,  was  devoted  to  the  organization  of 
local  monasteries  or  new  orders,  or  to  the  reformation  of  old 
orders.  When  occasionally  some  great  monastic  leader  took 
hold  of  a  real  moral  and  social  task,  the  effect  was  sometimes 
wonderful. 

One  of  the  worst  consequences'  of  monasticism  was  the 
sterihzing  of  the  best  individuals.  The  minds  of  ideal  bent 
were  not  allowed  to  propagate.  The  monks  and  nuns  were 
condemned  to  childlessness.  The  enthusiasm  of  the  monas- 
tic movement  dragged  the  common  priesthood  into  celibacy 
also.  Aside  from  the  considerations  of  ecclesiastical  politics, 
it  was  chiefly  the  reaction  of  monasticism  which  made  celibacy 
compulsory  for  the  priest.  But  the  sterility  of  monks  and  nuns 
and  priests  for  so  many  centuries  turned  the  laws  of  heredity 
against  the  moral  progress  of  the  race.  It  was  just  as  if  an 
agricultural  experiment  station  should  nip  off  all  the  flowers 
that  showed  unusual  color  and  fragrance  and  should  develop 
seed  from  the  rest.  It  has  been  truly  asserted  that  the  most 
draining  effect  which  war  has  on  the  life  of  nations  is  that  it 
kills  off  the  capable  and  lets  the  incapable  propagate.  Monas- 
ticism eliminated  the  morally  capable,  just  as  war  eliminates 
the  physically  capable.  God  alone  knows  where  the  race 
might  be  to-day  if  the  natural  leaders  had  not  so  long  been 
made  childless  by  their  own  goodness.  The  wonderful 
fecundity  of  the  Protestant  parsonage  in  men  of  the  highest 
ability  and  ideality  is  proof  of  what  has  been  lost.  If  those 
who  were  vowed  to  celibacy  still  followed  the  desires  of  nature, 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 75 

they  begot  children  under  a  sense  of  sin  and  shame.  What 
that  may  signify  for  the  psychical  development  of  the  child, 
we  are  not  wise  enough  to  tell.  The  Catholic  Church  has 
always  had  an  instrument  of  immense  mobility  and  resource- 
fulness in  the  priests  and  monks  and  sisters  who  were  not 
burdened  with  family  cares  and  ties,  and  therefore  able  to 
give  their  thought  and  service  wholly  to  the  interests  of  the 
Church.  When  this  instrument  is  turned  to  social  purposes,  it 
is  exceedingly  effective  and  noble.  But  a  married  ministry  is 
more  likely  as  a  body  to  share  the  point  of  view  and  social 
interests  of  the  common  mass  of  men  who  also  have  women 
to  love  and  children  to  provide  for.  A  celibate  ministry  is 
perhaps  more  efficient  for  the  Church;  an  equally  good 
married  ministry  is  of  more  service  to  the  kingdom  of  God.* 
Thus  the  monastic  movement  deflected  and  paralyzed  the 
forces  which  might  have  contributed  to  a  Christian  recon- 
struction of  society.  It  also  made  the  very  idea  of  such  a 
reconstruction  impossible.  Every  monastery  was  a  concrete 
assertion  that  the  ordinary  life  of  men  was  not  only  evil  and 
far  removed  from  Christian  conditions,  but  also  that  it  was 
inherently  so  and  incapable  of  real  Christianization.  If  a 
man  wanted  to  live  a  really  Christian  life,  he  must  get  out  of 
civil  society  and  into  monastic  society.  Thereby  the  common 
social  life  was  condemned  like  a  rotten  hulk,  and  the  most 
potent  spiritual  authority  of  that  age  declared  any  effort  to 
reconstruct  it  to  be  useless  in  the  nature  of  things.  Thus  the 
reconstructive  aim  of  Christianity  was  declared  impossible, 
and  the  indomitable  reconstructive  energy  of  Christianity 
was  turned  to  the  building  of  ideal  communities  outside  of 
the  common  life. 

'  On  the  entire  subject  see  Lea,  "  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy." 


176  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Sacrament-       It   was   one  of  the  fundamental   characteristics  of   pro 
ahsm.  phetic  religion  in  Israel  that  the  service  of  God  was  sought  in 

ethical  conduct  and  not  in  ceremonial  performances.^  Chris- 
tianity in  its  original  purity  was  even  more  a  religion  of 
absolute  spirituality,  almost  wholly  emancipated  from  cere- 
monial elements,  insisting  simply  on  right  relations  to  men 
as  the  true  expression  of  religion.  If  this  attitude  had  been 
maintained,  it  would  have  turned  the  force  of  the  religious  im- 
pulse toward  social  righteousness,  and  would  inevitably  have 
resulted  in  a  progressive  insight  into  moral  wrong,  and  a  pro- 
gressive reconstruction  of  social  relations  in  conformity  with 
Christian  ideas. 

But  even  in  the  first  generation  few  were  able  to  rise  to  the 
spirituality  of  Jesus  and  Paul.  The  Jewish  Christians  clung 
to  their  inherited  ceremonial  and  tried  to  bind  Christianity 
down  to  it.  Christians  who  had  come  out  of  paganism  were 
imbued  with  the  customs,  the  instincts,  the  points  of  view 
created  by  the  entire  religious  past  of  the  race.  It  would 
have  been  an  almost  inconceivable  leap  forward  in  social  and 
religious  evolution  if  Christianity  for  the  mass  of  men  had 
remained  purely  ethical  and  spiritual.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
Christianity  did  not  displace  paganism,  but  penetrated  its 
bulk  with  a  kind  of  chemical  force  which  was  destined  in  the 
slow  processes  of  human  history  ultimately  to  disintegrate 
and  eliminate  paganism  from  human  thought  and  conduct. 
In  a  large  sense  the  entire  history  of  Christianity  to  our  day 
may  be  understood  as  an  effort  of  the  spirit  of  Christianity 
to  overcome  the  inheritance  of  ethnic  ideas  and  superstitions. 
The  Reformation  was  an  important  epoch  in  that  process, 
but  it  is  not  yet  completed. 

'  pp.  4-8. 


THE  WORK   OF  SOCIAL   BECONSTRUCTION  1 77 

Christianity  in  the  heathen  world  rapidly  relapsed  toward 
the  pre-prophetic  stage  of  religion.  The  material  furnished 
by  Christianity  was  worked  over  into  a  new  ceremonialism,  ^ 
essentially  like  the  magic  ritual  of  the  Greek  mysteries  and 
Oriental  cults,  only  more  wonderful  and  efficacious.  Baptism 
was  a  bath  of  regeneration,  cleansing  the  guilt  of  all  pre- 
baptismal  sins,  and  making  the  soul  like  that  of  a  new-bom 
child.  In  the  sacrament  of  the  eucharist  in  some  mysterious 
way  the  very  body  and  blood  of  the  Lord  were  present,  and 
the  divine  could  be  physically  eaten  and  its  powers  received 
to  transform  the  material  into  the  spiritual  and  immortal. 
The  formulas  of  baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper  were 
frought  with  magic  powers.  Worship  became  a  process  of 
mystagogic  initiation  into  the  divine  mysteries.  All  the  old 
essentials  of  pagan  religion  were  reproduced  in  Christian 
form,  but  with  scarcely  a  break  in  their  essence :  the  effort  to 
placate  God  by  sacrifice,  the  amulets,  vows,  oracles,  festivals, 
incense,  candles,  pictures,  and  statues.  It  was  like  a  tropical 
jungle  sprouting  again  after  it  is  cut  down.  In  Neo-Platonism, 
the  highest  and  most  refined  product  of  the  old  pagan  religion, 
we  observe  precisely  the  same  process.  The  whole  system  of 
popular  superstition  was  adapted  in  that,  too.  In  religion  the 
superstitions  and  feelings  of  the  lower  strata  usually  soak 
upward  and  saturate  the  higher.  The  leaders  of  religious 
thought  will  hallow  by  theological  thought  and  ecclesiastical 
institutions  the  coarse  and  superstitious  desires  appealing  to 
them  from  the  lower  masses. 

But  when  Christianity  turned  its  deepest  interest  from 
ethical  conduct  to  sacramental  ritual,  it  thereby  paralyzed 
its  power  of  moral  transformation.  Ritualism  numbed  the 
ethical  passion  of  primitive  Christianity.    There  was  a  vast 


178  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

loss  of  force  even  in  the  effects  exerted  in  private  morality. 
Of  course  the  loss  was  still  greater  in  the  less  intimate  and 
pressing  duties  of  the  wider  social  life.  The  parasitic  growth 
V  of  ritualism  and  sacramentalism  on  the  body  of  Christianity 
is  one  great  historical  cause  why  Christianity  has  never 
addressed  itself  to  the  task  of  social  reconstruction. 

The  dog-  A  parallel  fact  is  the  deflecting  influence  of  dogma.     Primi- 

matic  inter-  ^j^^  Christianity  had  strong  convictions  and  was  very  pro- 
'^  ductive  in  religious  thought,  but  it  was  undogmatic.  In  the 
Epistle  of  Barnabas,  written  near  the  beginning  of  the  second 
century,  we  find  the  noble  words,  "There  are  three  dogmas 
of  the  Lord :  the  hope  of  life,  .  .  .  and  righteousness  .  .  . 
and  love."  *  Contrast  with  that  the  opening  words  of  the 
so-called  Athanasian  Creed,  "Whosoever  will  be  saved,  be- 
fore all  things  it  is  necessary  that  he  hold  the  catholic  faith; 
which  faith  except  every  one  do  keep  whole  and  undefiled, 
without  doubt  he  shall  perish  everlastingly."  It  then  pro- 
ceeds to  set  forth  that  catholic  faith  in  a  number  of  subtle 
definitions  on  the  relation  between  the  persons  of  the  trinity. 
Since  the  second  century,  and  especially  since  the  great  doc- 
trinal controversies  of  the  fourth  century,  dogma  came  to  be 
regarded  as  the  essence  of  Christianity.  A  man  must  assent 
to  the  true  doctrine,  and  if  he  held  that,  the  fundamental 
requirement  of  religion  was  fulfilled.  But  when  dogmatic 
and  speculative  questions  absorbed  the  religious  interest,  less 
of  it  was  left  for  moral  and  social  questions.  The  polemic  bit- 
terness and  intolerance  engendered  by  the  dogmatism  of  the 
Church  have  been  anti-social  forces  of  the  first  importance. 
But  it  was  probably  an  even  greater  loss  to  the  race  that  its 

*  Epistle  of  Barnabas  I,  6. 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 79 

ablest  intellects,  the  natural  leaders  of  humanity,  concentrated 
their  abihties  on  comparatively  fruitless  speculation  and  on  the 
formulation  and  defence  of  dogmas  which  too  often  were  not 
even  true. 

The  mass  of  men  are  not  able  to  comprehend  speculation ; 
but  if  they  see  their  intellectual  leaders  vociferating  about  the 
incomprehensible,  they  will  echo  the  catchwords  with  an 
ardor  equal  to  their  ignorance.  In  them  the  constant  insist- 
ence on  dogma  induced  an  unthinking  submission  of  intellect 
which  dried  up  those  powerful  springs  of  free  faith  and  will 
that  had  made  primitive  Christianity  so  productive.  In  that 
respect  dogmatism  cooperated  with  ritualism,  which  likewise 
requires  no  intelligence  in  the  worshipper,  and  which  always 
acts  as  a  narcotic  on  the  intellect  of  the  people.  But  in- 
tellectual independence  and  determination  are  absolutely 
necessary  if  the  moral  forces  are  to  make  headway  against 
deeply  rooted  wrongs. 

A  type  of  Christianity  in  which  pagan  superstition  and 
Greek  intellectualism  had  paralyzed  the  original  social  and 
ethical  impetus,  was  in  no  condition  to  undertake  the  im- 
mense task  of  reorganizing  social  relations  on  a  Christian 
basis.  Even  the  personality  of  Jesus,  which  is  the  unceasing 
source  of  revolutionary  moral  power  in  Christianity,  was 
almost  completely  obscured  by  the  dogmatic  Christ  of  the 
Church. 

One  of  the  profoundest  changes  in  the  history  of  Christian-  The  church- 
ity  took  place  when  the  simple  groups  of  Christian  believers,  christian- 
who  were  bound  together  in  intimate  social  life  by  the  same  ity. 
faith  and  hope,  were  transformed  into  a  firmly  organized, 
authoritative,  and   international   ecclesiastical  organization. 


l8o  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Correct  doctrine,  as  we  have  seen,  came  to  be  essential  to 
salvation.  But  the  Church  alone  was  the  teacher  of  true 
doctrine.  She  alone  preserved  the  deposit  of  faith  received 
by  apostolic  tradition  and  had  the  promise  of  Christ  that  she 
would  be  kept  in  the  truth.  The  sacraments  alone  could 
mediate  salvation,  and  the  Church  and  her  priesthood  by 
apostolic  succession  and  ordination  alone  had  the  power  to 
administer  the  sacraments,  to  pronounce  the  magic  words 
that  would  change  the  bread  and  wine  into  the  mysterious 
vehicle  of  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ,  and  to  absolve  from 
guilt  and  save  from  hell.  Thus  the  Church  was  the  great 
channel  of  salvation;  apart  from  the  Church  there  was  no 
salvation.  If  a  man  wanted  to  be  saved,  —  and  men  wanted 
it  intensely,  —  he  must  remain  in  contact  with  the  Church, 
obedient  to  her  teaching  and  spiritual  direction.  Perhaps 
the  most  distinctive  characteristic  of  Christianity  down  to  our 
own  time  has  been  its  churchliness. 

Christian  ethics  became  churchly  ethics.  An  action  was 
good  or  bad  mainly  because  the  Church  said  so.  It  was 
good  always  if  it  served  the  Church,  for  the  cause  of  the 
Church  was  the  cause  of  God.*  There  was  no  higher  exercise 
of  piety  than  to  build  churches  or  endow  monasteries.  Ava- 
rice was  refusal  to  enrich  the  Church.  Charity  to  the  Church 
covered  a  multitude  of  sins.  If  a  king  served  the  cause  of  the 
Church,  he  was  a  blessed  man,  though  he  might  betray  the 
cause  of  his  people  in  doing  so.     Gregory  of  Tours  freely  nar- 

*  In  the  papal  penitentiary  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  gravest  crimes 
are  those  involving  insubordination  to  the  Church.  A  priest  who  admitted 
an  excommunicated  man  to  worship  had  to  pay  a  penalty  equal  to  that  of  a 
parricide  and  greater  than  that  of  a  perjurer.  A  priest  giving  Christian 
burial  while  a  country  was  under  the  interdict  was  still  more  severely  pun- 
ished. 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  l8l 

rates  the  shameful  life  of  the  Prankish  kings,  but  he  naively 
calls  them  men  of  God  on  whom  the  divine  blessing  rested,  be- 
cause they  were  zealous  for  the  catholic  cause  and  confessed 
the  blessed  trinity.  Clovis  prospered  because  he  was  a  sup- 
porter of  the  Orthodox  Church.  Alaric  sought  the  same  am- 
bitious ends,  but  lost  his  kingdom,  his  people  and  eternal  life, 
because  he  was  an  Arian  heretic.^  The  mediaeval  clergy  were 
often  notoriously  immoral ;  but  the  people  were  kept  in  awe  of 
them  because  they  were  the  representatives  of  the  Church,  and 
through  them  alone  could  the  sacraments  and  the  absolution 
of  the  Church  be  obtained.  They  might  not  have  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  but  they  had  the  ordination  of  the  Church. 
Churchly  correctness  took  precedence  of  Christlike  goodness. 
If  sin  profited  the  Church,  even  sin  might  be  holy.  The 
amount  of  distortion  of  facts,  falsification  of  history,  and 
forging  of  documents  practised  in  order  to  advance  the  cause 
of  the  Church  is  quite  incredible.  The  sale  of  indulgences, 
which  finally  unfettered  the  popular  protest  of  the  Refor- 
mation movement,  was  merely  a  glaring  instance  of  prostitut- 
ing the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  people  to  the  financial  enrich- 
ment of  the  church  organization. 

Christian  morality  finds  its  highest  dignity  and  its  constant 
corrective  in  making  the  kingdom  of  God  the  supreme  aim 
to  which  all  minor  aims  must  contribute  and  from  which  they 
gain  their  moral  quality.  The  Church  substituted  itself  for 
the  kingdom  of  God,  and  thereby  put  the  advancement  of  a 
tangible  and  very  human  organization  in  the  place  of  the 
moral  uplifting  of  humanity.  By  that  substitution  the  ethi- 
cal plane  of  all  actions  was  subtly  but  terribly  lowered.  The 
kingdom  of  God  can  never   be  advanced   by  cruelty  and 

*  Gregory  of  Tours,  "Historia  Francorum, "  II,  40,  and  III,  i. 


1 82  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

trickery ;  the  power  of  the  organized  Church  can  be  and  has 
been  advanced  by  persecution  and  forgery. 

By  that  substitution  the  Church  could  claim  all  service  and 
absorb  all  social  energies.  It  has  often  been  said  that  the 
Church  interposed  between  the  soul  of  man  and  God.  It 
also  interposed  between  man  and  humanity.  It  magnified 
what  he  did  for  the  Church  and  belittled  what  he  did  for 
humanity.  It  made  its  own  organization  the  chief  object  of 
social  service. 

The  more  churchly  Christianity  is,  the  more  will  the  Church 
be  the  only  sphere  of  really  Christian  activity.  Only  those 
portions  of  daily  life  which  are  related  to  the  Church  will  be 
illuminated  by  the  consciousness  of  serving  God.  The  rest 
is  secular,  natural,  permissible ;  it  is  not  religious  and  holy. 
The  secular  calling  in  the  home,  the  workshop,  or  the  town 
is  left  unhallowed  by  religion  and  void  of  that  joy  and  en- 
thusiasm which  come  through  the  consciousness  that  God 
loves  our  work.  If  a  man  takes  his  religion  seriously,  he  will 
then  want  to  devote  his  life  to  the  Church. 

The  property  of  the  primitive  Church  was  entirely  devoted 
to  the  needy.  The  officers  of  the  Church  lived  by  their  own 
labor  unless  the  service  of  Christ  compelled  them  to  forego 
their  earnings.  As  Christianity  became  ecclesiastical,  the 
Church  made  itself  the  chief  recipient  and  its  clergy  the 
chief  beneficiaries  of  Christian  giving.  If  a  man  helped  a 
friend  in  need,  he  did  a  moral  act.  If  he  gave  to  the  Church, 
he  did  a  religious  act.  The  Church  was  able  to  offer  the  most 
enticing  eternal  rewards  to  those  who  gave  to  her.  Thus  she 
discouraged  the  giving  of  aid  from  man  to  man  and  en- 
couraged the  concentration  of  giving  on  herself.  To  some 
extent  this  systematized  charity,  but  it  also  eliminated  the 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 83 

salutary  human  element  from  charity,  and  an  ever  larger 
percentage  of  the  gifts  never  reached  the  poor.  Charitable 
institutions  are  apt  to  use  an  increasing  share  of  their  income 
for  salaries  and  incidentals.  Trustees  are  apt  to  regard 
themselves  as  the  practical  owners  of  the  funds  they  have 
long  administered.  The  charity  of  the  Church  was  perhaps 
the  most  distinctly  social  service  which  it  rendered.  That 
service  was  diverted  the  more  Christianity  became  churchly 
in  its  essence. 

Since  the  progress  of  Christianity  was  identical  with  the 
progress  of  the  Church,  the  ablest  men  consumed  their 
strength  in  building  up  the  power  and  influence  of  the  Church 
and  in  working  their  way  to  the  places  in  the  Church  from 
which  they  could  direct  its  policies.  The  organizing  abihty 
which  might  have  reconstituted  social  life  was  expended  on 
the  organization  of  the  hierarchy  and  the  monastic  orders. 

The  State  is  the  organization  through  which  men  co- 
operate for  the  larger  social  ends.  If  men  conceive  of  political 
duties  as  a  high  religious  service  to  man  and  God,  the  State 
can  be  a  powerful  agent  in  the  bettering  of  human  life.  As 
long  as  the  Church  was  in  opposition  to  the  State,  the  Church 
denied  that  the  functions  of  the  State  had  any  sacredness  and 
deterred  its  members  from  entering  political  service.  But 
even  when  the  Church  and  the  State  had  entered  into  a  com- 
pact of  friendship,  the  Church  did  not  infuse  the  moral  vigor 
and  enthusiasm  into  the  political  life  which  it  might  have 
imparted.  It  turned  aside  many  of  the  ablest  and  choicest 
spirits  to  the  monastic  life  and. to  hierarchical  careers.  It 
has  often  been  said  that  when  the  organization  of  the  Empire 
was  tottering  to  its  fall,  a  new  social  edifice  was  rising  in  the 
organization  of  the  Church.     But  the  question  may  fairly  be 


184  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

asked  if  the  Church  did  not  hasten  the  fall  of  the  Empire 
by  draining  ofiF  so  much  of  the  best  strength  from  civil  hfe  and 
using  it  for  her  own  organization. 
The  influence  of  the  Church  on  humane  legislation  was 
"^  neutralized  by  her  anxiety  to  secure  benefits  for  herself.  The 
historian  Schiller,  in  speaking  of  the  failure  of  the  Church  to 
act  against  slavery,  says,  "In  general  it  is  astonishing  how 
little  influence  the  Church  always  exerted  on  the  develop- 
ment of  law."  ^  But  the  laws  conferring  financial  gifts  on 
the  Church  herself  and  exemptions  on  her  clergy  were  very 
numerous  and  important.  In  the  perpetual  conflicts  between 
the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  powers  in  the  Middle  Ages  it  is 
often  difficult  for  us  to  see  that  the  cause  of  Christianity  was 
in  any  sense  at  stake.  Doubtless  the  great  fighting  princes  of 
the  Church,  men  of  the  granite  quarry  like  Hildebrand,  were 
convinced  that  the  supremacy  of  the  Church  was  essential  to 
the  supremacy  of  spiritual  interests  and  the  reign  of  God  over 
man.  Doubtless  they  were  partly  right,  and  every  good 
churchman  of  to-day,  if  he  had  lived  then,  would  have  gone 
with  enthusiasm  into  the  fight  about  lay  investiture.  But 
from  our  present  perspective  we  see  clearly  enough  that  the 
cause  of  the  Church  was  not  at  all  identical  with  the  cause  of 
God,  and  that  the  power  of  Christ  over  humanity  did  not 
advance  at  even  pace  with  the  power  of  the  pope  over  the 
princes.  It  was  largely  a  class  struggle,  the  conflict  of  an 
ecclesiastical  aristocracy  with  a  secular  aristocracy,  and  the 
welfare  of  the  people  was  not  the  real  issue.  When  the  Church 
fought  for  her  own  pohtical  interests,  and  not  for  the  cause  of 
the  people,  her  influence  on  the  State  was  often  a  disturbing 
and  disastrous  one.     Where  clericalism  is  a  political  power, 

*  Hermann  Schiller,  "Geschichte  der  romischen  Kaiserzeit,"  I,  916. 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 85 

it  thrusts  an  alien  influence  into  every  political  question. 
Civic  questions  are  not  decided  on  their  own  merit,  but  ac- 
cording to  the  profit  the  clerical  machine  may  get  out  of  them. 
This  disturbing  influence  is  greatly  increased  if  the  Church 
is  not  a  national  body,  but  is  governed  from  a  foreign  centre. 
In  that  case  Roman  schemes  or  the  ambitions  of  Italian  up- 
starts may  determine  the  civil  policies  of  Germany  or  France. 

Thus  when  Christianity  was  embodied  in  an  all-absorb- 
ing and  all-dominating  ecclesiastical  organization,  its  social 
effectiveness  was  crippled.  Its  ethical  influence  was  lowered 
and  vitiated.  Its  fraternal  helpfulness  was  largely  absorbed 
by  the  clerical  machine.  Its  organizing  abihty  was  spent 
on  strengthening  its  o^vn  organization.  Its  influence  on  the 
State  was  used  to  secure  benefits  for  itself  rather  than  for 
the  people.  By  connecting  all  religious  life  with  its  own 
organization,  it  left  the  common  life  unhallowed  and  unre- 
newed. 

In  making  these  historical  criticisms  on  ecclesiasticism, 
I  do  not  belittle  the  immense  value  and  importance  of  Chris- 
tian churches.  Religion  demands  social  expression  like  all 
other  great  human  impulses.  Without  an  organization  to 
proclaim  it,  to  teach  it,  to  stimulate  it,  the  religious  life  would 
probably  be  greatly  weakened  in  the  best,  and  in  many  would 
be  powerless  and  unknown.  The  mischief  begins  when  the 
Church  makes  herself  the  end.  She  does  not  exist  for  her 
own  sake;  she  is  simply  a  working  organization  to  create 
the  Christian  hfe  in  individuals  and  the  kingdom  of  God  in 
human  society.  She  is  an  agent  with  large  powers,  and  like 
all  other  agents  she  is  constantly  tempted  to  use  her  powers 
for  herself.  Our  modern  political  parties  were  organized  to 
advocate  certain  political  principles  and  realize  them  in  public 


l86  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

life.  Gradually  they  have  come  to  regard  their  perpetuation 
as  an  end  in  itself,  and  public  welfare  is  subordinated  to  party 
victory.  Our  pubKc-service  corporations  exist  for  the  public, 
but  we  know  how  these  our  servants  have  become  our  masters, 
so  that  the  public  exists  for  their  dividends.  This  slow,  his- 
torical embezzlement  of  public  powers,  this  tendency  of  or- 
ganizations and  institutions  to  aggrandize  themselves  at  the 
expense  of  the  ends  for  which  they  were  called  into  exist- 
ence, is  one  of  the  most  important  phenomena  in  moral 
^  life.  There  is  no  permanent  institution  but  has  succumbed 
to  this  temptation.  The  organization  of  the  Church  is  simply 
one  sinner  among  many,  and  not  the  worst  by  any  means. 
Her  history  is  the  story  of  how  she  fell  by  rising,  and  rose  by 
falling.  No  one  who  loves  her  can  serve  her  better  than  by 
bringing  home  to  her  that  by  seeking  her  life  she  loses  it, 
and  that  when  she  loses  her  life  to  serve  the  kingdom  of  God, 
she  will  gain  it. 

Subser-  Ideally  the  State  is  the  organization  of  the  people  for  their 

the^State  larger  common  interests.  Actually  all  States  have  been 
organizations  of  some  section  of  the  people  to  protect  their 
special  interests  against  the  rest.  Ideally  the  chief  function 
of  the  State  should  be  the  maintenance  of  justice.  Actually 
the  chief  function  of  most  States  has  been  the  maintenance 
of  existing  conditions,  whatever  they  happened  to  be.  The 
State  is  the  representative  of  things  as  they  are ;  the  Church 
is  the  representative  of  things  as  they  ought  to  be.  In  so  far 
as  it  is  loyal  to  this  duty,  it  must  be  in  perpetual  but  friendly 
conflict  with  the  State,  pushing  it  on  to  ever  higher  lines  of 
duty.  Nothing  better  could  happen  to  any  State  than  to  have 
within  it  a  Church  devoted,  not  to  its  own  selfish  corporate 


THE    WORK   OF   SOCIAL    RECONSTRUCTION  1 87 

interests,  but  to  the  moral  welfare  of  humanity,  and  nudging 
the  reluctant  State  along  like  an  enlightened  pedagogue. 

Before  Constantine  the  Church  was,  of  course,  unable  to 
fulfil  any  such  friendly  office  as  moral  monitor.  After  Con- 
stantine the  Church  was  in  many  respects  less  free  than  it  had 
been  before.  The  Christian  emperors  considered  the  appa- 
ratus of  the  Church  as  an  important  part  of  the  machinery 
of  the  Empire,  and  kept  a  firm  and  coercing  hand  on  the 
legislative  councils  and  the  episcopal  executives  of  the  Church. 
Their  favors  were  even  more  deadly  than  their  decrees  of 
banishment.  The  leaders  of  the  Church  learned  to  be  cour- 
tiers in  order  to  further  the  interests  of  their  sees  and  of  ortho- 
doxy in  general,  and  the  atmosphere  of  courts  is  not  healthy 
for  any  who  are  to  champion  the  cause  of  the  people  in  the 
spirit  of  Christ.  During  the  Middle  Ages  the  landed  wealth 
of  the  Church  made  her  a  part  of  the  feudal  system.  She 
was  on  the  whole  a  conservative  and  merciful  landlord,  but 
her  interest  was  with  the  landed  aristocracy  and  the  govern- 
ing powers.  When  she  antagonized  the  State,  it  was  in  her 
own  interest.  The  Reformation  did  not  directly  remedy 
the  dependence  of  the  Church  on  the  State,  but  in  some 
countries  made  the  Church  an  even  more  servile  tool  of  the 
princes.  To  our  own  day,  wherever  the  Church  leans  on 
state  protection  and  lives  on  state  aid,  she  is  expected  to  lend 
her  moral  support  to  the  State  to  maintain  existing  conditions, 
and  she  does  so.  Both  in  England  and  Germany,  for  in- 
stance, the  Established  Church  is  a  Tory  influence.  But  when 
she  is  thus  allied  with  the  powers  that  be,  she  can  make  no 
effective  protest  against  the  wrongs  that  be.  The  Church 
supported  by  the  State  is  in  the  position  of  the  office-holders 
appointed  by  the  party  in  power.    They  have  to  support  the 


l88  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

policy  of  the  administration,  praising  it  when  it  is  good,  and 
defending  it  when  it  is  bad.  The  separation  of  Church  and 
State  has  the  double  advantage  of  removing  the  clerical 
influence  from  political  life,  and  the  political  influence  from 
church  life.  It  leaves  the  Church  unmuzzled  to  speak  out,  if 
it  has  anything  to  say.  It  does  its  best  work  when  it  is  the 
party  in  opposition,  poor  but  vociferous. 

The  Church  as  a  body  has  been  dependent  on  the  State 
and  therefore  subservient  to  it.  The  members  of  the  Church 
individually  have  been  politically  disfranchised  and  subject 
to  their  rulers,  and  that  has  made  them  passive  on  questions 
of  political  morality. 

While  the  Church  lived  in  the  hostile  and  heathen  Empire, 
its  members  had  to  keep  aloof  from  public  life  and  to  find 
all  their  interests  in  the  narrow  circle  of  the  family  and  the 
churches.  Hence,  so  far  as  asceticism  permitted,  the  ethics 
of  the  family  was  developed  and  leavened  with  Christian 
ideas.  The  early  narrowness  of  interest  left  its  record  in  the 
writings  of  the  apostles  and  the  early  Fathers,  and  set  a  prece- 
dent for  later  times. 

But  even  when  Christianity  was  tolerated  and  encouraged, 
the  mass  of  men  were  shut  out  from  active  participation  in 
government.  Politics  was  the  occupation  of  a  privileged 
class.  But  where  there  are  no  political  rights,  there  are  no 
political  duties,  and  the  sense  of  political  obligation  is  not 
developed.  A  man  is  not  likely  to  take  a  keen  and  intelligent 
interest  in  a  sphere  of  action  over  which  he  has  no  control 
and  in  which  he  is  never  called  to  act. 

Moreover,  if  a  preacher  had  an  audience  of  subject  peasants, 
he  had  no  incentive  to  preach  politics  to  them,  unless  he  was 
a  popular  agitator.    What  political  duties  could  he  preach  to 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCL\L   RECONSTRUCTION  189 

them  except  to  render  obedience  to  the  king  and  their  feudal 
lord,  and  to  be  content  in  the  station  in  which  it  had  pleased 
God  to  place  them  ?  And  of  that  kind  of  political  preaching 
there  has  always  been  more  than  enough.  There  has  never 
been  any  feeling  of  treading  on  ground  alien  to  religion  when 
the  few  but  invaluable  texts  were  reached  in  which  law  and 
order  are  enjoined.  It  was  only  when  a  preacher  spoke 
before  kings  and  gentry  Hke  Latimer,  or  before  the  citizens 
of  free  cities  Hke  Savonarola,  or  when  some  great  national 
movement  stirred  all  classes  in  a  common  interest  against  a 
foreign  enemy,  that  social  or  pohtical  preaching  could  be 
attempted,  and  right  valiantly  did  many  a  Christian  man  use 
such  opportunities. 

But  the  limits  set  by  a  despotic  age  have  continued  into 
our  democratic  age.  They  have  become  theological  tradition. 
The  sermons  of  one  generation  are  read  and  imitated  by  the 
next.  Theological  text-books  and  teachers  move  along  the 
trodden  paths.  The  wider  interests  thrown  open  by  the 
advent  of  the  people  to  political  power  have  very  slowly 
called  forth  corresponding  religious  thought.  The  old 
historical  conditions  have  evolved  a  theory  by  which  a  circle 
of  short  radius  is  drawn  about  the  individual.  The  relations 
lying  within  that  circle  are  supposed  to  be  within  the  province 
of  religious  thought  and  church  teaching ;  those  lying  beyond 
it  are  outside  of  the  realm  of  religion.  The  ethics  of  the 
private  life,  of  the  family,  and  of  friendly  social  intercourse, 
together  with  the  interests  of  education,  literature,  and  to  some 
extent  of  art,  lie  within  this  circle.  Industry,  commerce,  and 
politics  in  the  main  lie  outside  of  it.  "Religion  has  nothing 
to  do  with  politics  and  sociology."  This  circular  division 
has  no  rational  justification.     It  is  an  historical  product  of  an 


190  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

age  when  the  common  people  were  shut  out  from  participa- 
tion in  public  affairs.  It  is  now  out  of  date  and  its  perpetua- 
tion is  wholly  bad.  The  people  now  have  political  and  social 
rights,  yet  the  Church  is  not  giving  adequate  teaching  on  the 
duties  corresponding  to  those  novel  rights.  Industrial  and 
political  affairs  press  upon  the  life  of  every  man  with  a  force 
unknown  formerly,  yet  the  organization  which  ought  to 
discuss  the  new  moral  problems  is  silent  or  inefficient 
in  its  teaching.  The  great  sociologist  Schaeffle,  speaking 
of  the  slowness  with  which  the  larger  relations  of  com- 
merce and  politics  have  been  affected  by  Christianity, 
truly  says,  "The  great  need  of  our  time  is  a  public  moral- 
ity." 

The  dependence  of  the  Church  on  the  State,  and  the 
political  passivity  of  the  subject  people,  combined  to  cripple 
the  social  efficiency  of  the  Church  in  former  times,  and  the 
precedents  and  theories  set  up  in  the  pre-democratic  age 
continue  to  operate  even  where  the  causes  which  justified 
them  have  passed  away. 

The  disap-  The  subjection  of  the  Church  to  the  State  would  have  been 
^urch^de-  i^eutralized  and  overcome  if  only  the  churches  had  pre- 
mocracy.  served  the  Christian  democracy  of  their  own  organization. 
The  primitive  churches  set  out  with  an  organization  as 
democratic  and  simply  patriarchal  as  a  Teutonic  town- 
meeting.  By  the  beginning  of  the  second  century  they  were 
passing  under  the  limited  monarchy  of  a  single  bishop,  and 
the  limited  monarchy  tended  to  shake  off  all  limitations  and 
thrust  down  all  competing  forces.  In  ever  widening  areas 
monarchical  organization  grew  up,  and  this  tendency  finally 
culminated  in  the  absolutism  of  the  papacy,  in  which  all  power 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  I9I 

flows  from  the  head  downward.  The  clergy  became  a 
hierarchy  graded  on  monarchical  principles.  At  the  same 
time  the  laity  were  gradually  ousted  from  all  the  rights  of 
election,  church  discipline,  and  self-government,  which  they 
had  originally  possessed,  and  reduced  to  the  helpless  passivity 
of  a  subject  population  under  a  bureaucratic  despotism.  This 
slow  revolution  was  due  partly  to  the  ambition  and  lust  for 
power  inherent  in  human  nature,  but  mainly  to  the  as- 
similating influence  of  secular  institutions.^  The  churches 
step  by  step  copied  the  forms  of  organization  prevalent  about 
them.^  The  centralization  of  church  power  in  the  clergy  and 
the  bishop  in  the  third  century  took  place  simultaneously 
with  a  centralization  of  power  in  the  organization  of  the 
Empire.^  The  Church  poured  its  organization  into  the 
moulds  furnished  by  imperial  Rome,  and  when  the  mould 
was  broken  and  crumbled  away,  the  Church  in  its  system  of 
government  stood  erect  as  an  ecclesiastical  duplicate  of  the 
Empire. 

For  the  purposes  of  ecclesiastical  aggrandizement  it  was 
worth  a  great  deal  to  the  Church  that  it  inherited  the  results 
of  the  organizing  genius  of  Rome,  but  the  inheritance  was 
deadly  to  the  revolutionary  social  influence  of  the  Church. 
Jesus  had  emphatically  repudiated  the  principles  on  which 
political  government  is  usually  run:  "Ye  know  that  the 
rulers  of  the  nations  lord  it  over  them.  Not  so  shall  it  be 
among  you."  *  But  the  Church  duplicated  in  its  own  or- 
ganization the  aristocracy  and  monarchy  of  the  world,  and 

*  See  Hatch,  "  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches." 

*  See  Harnack,  Contemporary  Review,  December,  1904. 
'Schiller,  "Romische  Kaiserzeit,"  I,  911  ff. 

*  Matthew  20.  20-28. 


192  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

therewith  prepared  a  home  for  the  despotic  spirit  within  the 
edifice  dedicated  to  democracy.  A  given  spirit  will  create  an 
institution  adapted  to  itself;  but  in  turn  an  institution  will 
constantly  evoke  the  spirit  that  fits  it.  The  Catholic  Church 
by  its  organization  tends  to  keep  alive  and  active  the  despotic 
spirit  of  decadent  Roman  civilization  in  which  it  originated. 
Even  to-day,  when  the  current  of  democracy  is  flowing  so 
powerfully  through  the  modem  world,  the  Roman  Church 
has  a  persistent  affinity  for  the  monarchical  principle  and 
an  instinctive  distrust  of  democracy.  The  chronic  difficulty 
encountered  by  the  Latin  nations  of  Southern  Europe  and 
Southern  America  in  making  free  institutions  work,  is 
probably  not  due  to  any  inefficiency  of  blood  or  race,  but 
partly  to  clerical  interference  in  government,  and  partly  to 
the  anti-democratic  spirit  constantly  flowing  out  from  the 
Roman  Church  into  the  national  life  of  peoples  under  her 
control.^  If  we  ask  why  the  Church  failed  to  reorganize 
society  on  a  basis  of  liberty  and  equality,  we  have  here  one  of 
the  most  important  answers. 

The  causal  influences  running  back  and  forth  between  the 
civil  and  the  ecclesiastical  organization  of  the  people  are  far 
more  powerful  than  is  generally  understood.  The  monar- 
chical government  of  the  Roman  Church  originated  in  the 
despotic  society  of  ancient  Rome  and  then  perpetuated  itself 
by  the  conservatism  of  hallowed  religious  institutions.  The 
aristocratic  republicanism  of  the  Calvinistic  churches  origi- 
nated in  the  Swiss  republics,  and  then  perpetuated  itself 
wherever  Calvinism  went.    The  democracy  of  the  Congre- 

*  See  the  little  book  of  the  eminent  Belgian  economist,  Emile  de  Laveleye, 
"  Protestantism  and  Catholicism  in  their  Bearing  on  the  Liberty  and  Pros- 
perity of  Nations." 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 93 

gational  church  bodies  originated  in  the  democratic  passions 
of  the  EngHsh  Revolution  and  also  perpetuated  itself.  Thus 
the  Church  borrows  from  the  State. 

But  in  the  same  manner  the  State  borrows  from  the  Church. 
"The  action  of  religion  on  the  minds  of  men  is  so  profound 
that  they  are  always  led  to  give  to  the  organization  of  the 
State  forms  which  they  have  borrowed  from  that  of  religion."  ^ 
If  a  people  is  accustomed  to  the  spirit  and  practice  of  self-gov- 
ernment in  its  local  churches,  it  will  find  self-government 
in  the  civil  community  that  much  easier,  and  any  govern- 
ment from  above  wiU  be  unpalatable.  The  Congrega- 
tional churches  of  New  England  and  the  town-meetings  of 
New  England  are  causally  related,  just  like  the  priest-ridden 
Church  of  Russia  and  her  political  autocracy.  The  maxim 
of  King  James  I,  "No  bishop,  no  king,"  was  quite  right  in 
the  perception  that  one  kind  of  monarchy  strengthens  the 
other.  In  the  English  Revolution  the  political  attitude  of 
each  section  was  quite  accurately  graded  according  to  its 
ecclesiastical  radicalism.  The  Episcopalians  were  for  the 
king;  the  Presbyterians  were  for  a  strong  Parliament;  the 
Independents  were  republicans,  and  vice  versa. 

Thus  it  seems  likely  that  if  the  Christian  churches  had 
remained  democratic  and  self-governing  organizations,  the 
spirit  of  Christian  democracy  would  have  been  perpetuated, 
intensified,  and  practically  trained  among  them,  and  would 
have  turned  with  greater  vigor  and  efficiency  to  all  moral 
and  social  tasks  lying  about  the  Church.  It  is  significant 
that  with  every  turn  toward  a  purer  conception  of  worship 
and  doctrine  in  the  evangelical  sects  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
there  was  also  a  turn  toward  democracy  in  church  organ- 

*  De  Laveleye,  "Protestantism  and  Catholicism,"  p.  34. 
o 


194  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE   SOCIAL  CRISIS 

ization    and    toward    radical   social   ideas.     They  all   had 
communistic  ideals. 

The  lack  of  To  undertake  the  gradual  reconstruction  of  social  life  con- 
compre-  sciously  and  intelligently  would  have  required  a  scientific 
hension  of     comprehension  of  social  life  which  was  totally  lacking  in  the 

social  de-  ....  jo 

velopment.  v  past.  Sociology  is  still  an  infant  science.  Modem  political 
economy  may  be  said  to  have  begun  with  Adam  Smith's 
**  Wealth  of  Nations,"  which  was  published  in  1776.  Mod- 
em historical  science,  which  is  interpreting  the  origins  and 
the  development  of  social  institutions,  is  only  about  a  century 
^  old. 

For  the  ordinary  man  the  social  order  as  he  finds  it  has 
all  the  sanctity  and  immutability  of  natural  and  divine  law. 
Under  feudalism  both  noble  and  peasant  assumed  that  God 
himself  had  divided  humanity  into  barons  and  serfs,  and  any 
contradiction  of  that  seemed  a  sacrilege  to  the  barons  and  a 
joyful  surprise  to  the  serfs.  In  monarchical  countries  the 
institution  of  kingship  is  regarded  as  the  natural  and  divine 
order.  In  European  thought  it  is  treated  as  an  axiom  that 
there  must  be  well-defined  social  classes.  In  our  own  country 
intelligent  men  assume  that  land  has  always  been  freely 
bought  and  sold  by  individuals  as  to-day;  that  a  man  has 
always  had  the  power  to  dispose  about  his  property  even  after 
he  was  dead ;  that  business  men  have  always  bought  in  the 
cheapest  market  and  sold  in  the  dearest  at  whatever  prices 
they  could  make;  that  workingmen  have  always  competed 
with  one  another  for  wages;  and  that  any  attempt  to  change 
these  social  adjustments  is  an  attempt  to  meddle  with  a  natural 
law  as  universal  as  the  law  of  gravitation.  Yet  our  capital- 
{  istic  organization  is  of  comparatively  recent  origin,  and  would 


THE   WORK  OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  I95 

have  been  thought  intolerable  and  immoral  in  times  past. 
We  are  only  now  coming  to  realize  that  within  certain  limits 
human  society  is  plastic,  constantly  changing  its  forms,  and 
that  the  present  system  of  social  organization,  as  it  super- 
seded others,  may  itself  be  displaced  by  something  better. 
Without  such  a  conception  of  the  evolution  of  social  insti- 
tutions any  larger  idea  of  social  regeneration  could  hardly 
enter  the  minds  of  men.  The  modern  socialist  movement  is 
really  the  first  intelligent,  concerted,  and  continuous  effort  to 
reshape  society  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  social  develop- 
ment. 

The  comprehension  of  the  gradualness  of  social  changes 
is  also  a  late  attainment.  The  childish  mind  wants  swift 
results  and  loses  interest  if  things  move  slowly.  It  wants 
the  flower  seeds  which  were  planted  last  night  to  be  above 
ground  before  breakfast.  It  finds  the  atmosphere  of  the 
fairy  tales  so  congenial,  because  there  great  things  happen 
at  the  waving  of  the  fairy's  wand.  This  is  also  the 
characteristic  of  the  savage,  and  in  lessening  degree  of 
every  unscientific  mind.  It  understands  personal  action, 
and  so  far  as  its  personal  powers  will  reach,  it  is  willing 
to  help  in  making  things  better.  For  anything  beyond  its 
immediate  reach  and  power  it  trusts  in  divine  intervention. 
For  the  slow  moulding  of  institutions  by  ideas  and  the  slow 
creation  of  ideas  to  justify  institutions,  for  the  steady  alterna- 
tion of  cause  and  effect  in  the  development  of  society,  there 
has  been  no  trained  observation. 

The  Church,  as  we  have  seen,  had  the  conception  of  a 
thorough  social  regeneration.  To  that  extent  religion  was 
prophetic  and  outran  the  political  intellect  by  many  centuries. 
But  Jesus  stood  almost  alone  in  the  comprehension  of  the 


196  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

gradualness  of  moral  conquest.  The  millennial  hope  was 
the  modern  social  hope  without  the  scientific  conception  of 
/"<  organic  development.  The  Church  Fathers  were  lacking  in 
the  historical  sense  for  development.  The  educated  men 
among  them  had  been  trained  in  the  Roman  rhetorical 
schools,  and  the  educational  system  of  that  day  was  almost 
useless  for  producing  historical  insight.^  The  air  of  the 
miraculous  which  hung  about  Christian  thought  down  to 
modem  times  was  also  directly  hostile  to  any  scientific  com- 
prehension of  social  facts.  When  all  things  happened  by 
devils  or  angels,  how  could  men  understand  the  real  causes 
of  things? 

In  the  Bible  the  Church  always  had  an  historical  literature 
which  might  have  opened  its  eyes  to  a  multitude  of  social 
facts,  and  every  time  the  Bible  was  in  some  way  freshly  com- 
prehended, the  social  leaven  hidden  in  it  did  begin  to  work. 
All  the  mediaeval  evangelical  movements  which  were  based 
on  renewed  reading  of  the  Bible  involved  some  crude  but 
noble  attempt  to  live  a  life  of  social  fraternity.  When  the 
Bible  became  the  common  property  of  the  people  through 
the  invention  of  printing  and  the  translations  of  the  Refor- 
mation, it  exerted  a  marked  influence  on  the  general  social 
stir  of  that  age.  But  in  general  the  social  enlightenment  con- 
tained in  the  Bible  was  numbed  by  the  dogmatic  and  ec- 
clesiastical interests  of  the  Church  and  by  the  allegorical 
method  of  interpretation.  Theologians  hunted  for  proof- 
texts  of  dogma.  Churchmen  were  interested  in  the  tithing 
system  of  the  Old  Testament  because  it  helped  them  to 
exact  ecclesiastical  taxes,  but  not  in  the  land  system  of  the 

*  See  Bigg,  "The  Church's  Task  under  the  Roman  Empire,"  Lecture  I, 
"Education." 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 97 

Mosaic  Law.  The  allegorical  method  neutralized  the  social 
contents  of  the  Bible  by  spiritualizing  everything.  For  in- 
stance, the  emancipation  of  the  Israelite  tribes  from  galling 
overwork  and  cruelty  in  Egypt,  and  their  conquest  of  a  good 
tract  of  land  for  settlement,  is  a  striking  story  of  social  revolt, 
but  it  was  turned  into  an  allegory  of  the  exodus  of  the  soul 
from  the  world  and  its  attainment  of  the  Promised  Land 
beyond  the  Jordan  of  death.  The  great  social  parable  of 
the  good  Samaritan  was  "spiritualized"  into  an  allegory  of 
humanity,  which  leaves  the  divine  city  of  Jerusalem  and 
goes  down  to  Jericho,  the  accursed.  It  falls  into  the  hands  of 
the  devil  and  his  angels,  is  stripped  of  the  robes  of  its  original 
righteousness  and  left  half  dead  in  its  sins.  But  Christ  finds 
it,  pours  wine  and  oil,  the  blood  of  his  passion  and  his  Spirit, 
into  its  wounds,  and  commits  it  to  the  Church  to  be  cared  for 
tiU  his  second  advent.^  This  method  of  interpreting  sacred 
books  is  no  Christian  invention.  The  Jews  used  the  Old 
Testament,  and  the  Greek  philosophers  used  Homer  in  the 
same  way.  It  was  an  ingenious  and  swift  way  of  getting 
ready-made  spiritual  and  doctrinal  results  from  the  Bible. 
But  like  a  sleight-of-hand  performer  taking  ribbons  and 
rabbits  out  of  a  silk  hat,  it  never  took  anything  out  of  the 
Bible  that  was  not  already  in  the  mind  of  the  interpreter, 
and  thus  it  learned  nothing  new  from  the  Bible.  And  by  its 
tendency  to  seek  for  spiritual  and  mystical  meanings  it  be- 
littled and  overlooked  the  homely  social  significance  of  the 
biblical  stories  and  teachings. 

The  Church  shared  with  all  the  rest  of  humanity  the  child- 

*  This  method  of  interpretation  is  still  sanctioned  by  what  is  probably  the 
most  widely  used  book  on  the  parables  in  English,  Archbishop  Trench's 
"Notes  on  the  Parables  of  our  Lord  " 


198  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

like  view  of  the  world,  the  lack  of  the  historical  sense,  the 
inability  to  understand  the  facts  and  laws  of  social  devel- 
opment. The  moral  intuition  awakened  by  reUgion  made  it 
swifter  and  bolder  to  hope  for  a  radical  social  change  than 
those  who  travelled  by  common  sense  alone ;  but  the  preva- 
lent belief  in  the  miraculous  and  in  constant  divine  inter- 
ventions counteracted  the  enlightening  effects  of  its  moral 
vision. 

These  intellectual  deficiencies  would,  perhaps,  alone  suffice 
to  explain  why  the  Church  has  never  undertaken  a  clear- 
eyed  and  continuous  reconstruction  of  society  in  any  larger 
way. 

The  out-  We  set  out  on  this  discussion  with  the  proposition  that  the 

discussion.^  failure  of  Christianity  to  accomphsh  that  task  of  social  re- 
generation to  which  it  seemed  committed  by  its  origins,  was 
not  due  to  the  conscious  and  wise  self -limitation  of  the  Church, 
but  to  a  series  of  historical  causes.  Some  of  the  most  impor- 
tant of  these  causes  I  have  tried  to  set  forth,  I  think  that  for 
any  one  following  this  enumeration  dispassionately  and  with 
previous  comprehension  of  the  historical  facts  alluded  to, 
even  so  imperfect  a  resume  can  hardly  fail  make  the  main 
proposition  at  least  probable.  If  any  considerable  portion  of 
the  argument  has  been  correct,  it  follows  that  the  failure  of  the 
Church  to  undertake  the  work  of  a  Christian  reconstruction 
of  social  life  has  not  been  caused  by  its  close  adherence  to  the 
spirit  of  Christ  and  to  the  essence  of  its  rehgious  task,  but  to 
the  deflecting  influence  of  alien  forces  penetrating  Christian- 
ity from  without  and  clogging  the  revolutionary  moral  power 
inherent  in  it. 
In  primitive  Christianity  the  failure  is  sufficiently  accounted 


/ 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  1 99 

for  by  the  impossibility  of  undertaking  a  social  propaganda 
within  the  hostile  Empire,  and  by  the  hostility  to  the  exist- 
ing civilization  created  through  the  protest  against  idolatry 
and  through  the  persecutions  suffered  by  Christians.  The 
catastrophic  element  in  the  millennial  hope  was  an  inheritance 
from  Judaism.  The  belief  in  the  demon  powers  ruling  in 
heathen  society  was  partly  Jewish,  partly  heathen. 

The  other-worldliness,  the  asceticism  and  monastic  en- 
thusiasm, the  sacramental  and  ritual  superstitions,  were  all 
derived  from  contemporary  religious  drifts  in  heathen  society. 
The  dogmatic  bent  was  acquired  mainly  from  Greek  in- 
tellectualism.  The  union  of  Church  and  State  was  likewise 
a  reversion  to  ethnic  rehgion.  The  lack  of  political  rights 
and  interests  among  the  mass  of  Christian  people,  and  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  original  democracy  of  church  organization, 
were  part  of  the  curse  of  despotism  which  lay  upon  all  hu- 
manity. The  lack  of  a  scientific  comprehension  of  society  was 
in  the  main  inevitable  in  the  past  stages  of  intellectual  prog- 
ress. 

At  first  sight  such  a  conception  of  Christian  history  seems 
like  a  tremendous  impeachment  of  the  Church  for  apostasy 
and  dereliction  of  duty.  But  not  to  any  one  who  understands 
the  patience  of  God  and  the  infinite  slowness  and  imperfec- 
tion of  historical  progress.  It  takes  so  long  for  new  ideas 
to  trickle  down  through  the  solid  strata  of  human  life ;  so  long 
for  new  conceptions  to  get  sufficient  grip  on  the  mass  of  men 
to  sway  them ;  so  long  for  the  moral  nature  of  the  social  body 
to  be  sensitized.  Any  one  who  has  had  experience  in  the 
training  of  children  or  young  minds  will  realize  how  hard  it  is 
to  build  a  lasting  basis  of  independent  intelligence  and  firm 
morality,  and  how  opposing  influences  perpetually  neutralize 


200  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  best  work  of  the  parent  or  teacher.  Any  one  who  has 
honestly  tried  to  live  a  Christian  Hfe  himself,  will  be  ready  to 
take  a  humble  view  of  the  success  attending  his  efforts.  Any 
one  who  has  tried  to  train  a  single  church  or  club  or  trades- 
union  to  take  high  points  of  view  and  rise  to  nobler  lines  of 
action,  will  realize  how  hopeful  and  how  disheartening  the 
task  is.  When  Jesus  bent  his  soul  to  uplift  humanity,  he  set 
his  shoulders  to  a  task  which  is  not  accomplished  in  a  day. 
The  modern  intellect,  which  reckons  with  thousands  of  years 
in  the  evolution  of  the  savage,  with  hundreds  of  thousands  in 
the  formation  of  geological  deposits,  and  with  eternities  in 
astronomical  evolution,  ought  to  be  ready  to  have  patience 
if  the  full  results  of  the  Christian  spirit  have  not  yet  come  to 
fruitage. 

If  such  a  review  of  past  failures  leaves  a  feeling  of  con- 
demnatory surprise,  it  is  largely  due  to  the  false  expectations 
raised  in  the  past  by  religious  rhetoric.  Christian  orators 
have  scurried  through  history  for  edifying  anecdotes.  They 
have  pictured  the  first  three  centuries  as  a  golden  age  of 
Christian  love  and  purity.  They  have  assumed  that  the  en- 
thronement of  Christianity  as  the  state  religion  of  the  Empire 
and  the  apparent  conquest  of  paganism  meant  the  actual  dis- 
appearance of  pagan  habits  of  mind  and  customs.  As  if 
anything  set  up  by  thousands  of  years  of  history  could 
vanish  into  thin  air !  They  have  represented  the  progress 
of  Christianity  as  a  triumphal  procession  of  the  gospel,  leav- 
ing regenerated  nations  and  ages  behind  it.  Then  if  we  awake 
from  that  fictitious  enthusiasm  and  face  the  sober  facts  of 
human  imperfection,  it  is  a  sore  and  angry  surprise. 

To  say  that  Christianity  in  the  past  has  largely  followed 
alien  influences  and  has  missed  its  greatest  mission,  is  not  to 


THE    WORK   OF   SOCIAL    RECONSTRUCTION  20I 

condemn  the  men  of  the  past.  They  followed  the  light  they 
had  and  threw  their  lives  into  the  pursuit  of  that  light  with  an 
ardor  that  puts  us  to  shame.  If  we  have  any  zeal  for  the 
truth  in  us  now,  it  is  altogether  likely  that  we  would  have 
shouted  for  the  Homousios  or  the  Homoiusios  had  we  walked 
the  streets  of  Alexandria  in  the  fourth  century.  If  I  had  known 
St.  Francis,  I  hope  I  should  have  had  grace  enough  to  be- 
come a  Franciscan  friar  and  to  serve  the  Lady  Poverty.  If 
destiny  had  put  me  on  the  chair  of  St.  Peter,  I  hope  I  should 
have  made  a  good  fight  against  the  encroachments  of  the 
secular  power  on  the  sacred  heritage  of  Christ  and  the  vicar 
of  Christ.  But  being  a  twentieth-century  Christian,  I  hope  ^ 
I  shall  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  If  the  men  of  the  past  flinched 
in  following  their  ideals,  they  must  answer  to  God  for  it. 
Also  if  they  consciously  taught  what  was  unchristian,  or 
quenched  the  better  light  in  others. 

The  sadness  of  the  failure  hitherto  is  turned  into  brightest  The  passing 
hopefulness  if  we  note  that  all  the  causes  which  have  hitherto  causeTln 
neutralized  the  social  efficiency  of  Christianity  have  strangely  modem  life, 
disappeared  or  weakened  in  modem  life.     Christianity  has 
shed  them  as  an  insect  sheds  its  old  casing  in  passing  through 
its  metamorphosis,  and  with  the  disappearance  of  each  of 
these  causes,  Christianity  has  become  fitter  to  take  up  its 
regenerative  work.     Let  us  run  over  the  causes  of  failure  set 
forth  in  this  chapter  and  note  how  they  have  weakened  or 
vanished. 

In  the  Roman  Empire,  as  we  have  seen,  social  agitation 
would  have  been  suppressed  promptly.  To-day  it  still  en- 
counters the  moral  resentment  of  the  classes  whose  interests 
are  endangered  by  a  moral  campaign  and,  if  necessary,  these 


202  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

interests  are  able  to  use  the  political  machinery  to  suppress 
agitation.  But  in  the  freer  countries  of  Western  civilization 
the  dissemination  of  moral  ideas  is  almost  untrammelled. 
The  prophet's  message  still  brings  the  prophet's  odium;  but 
a  man  will  have  to  go  far  if  he  wants  to  be  stoned  or  put  in  the 
stocks. 

Primitive  Christianity  did  not  work  for  social  changes 
which  required  a  long  outlook,  because  it  expected  the  im- 
mediate return  of  Christ.  That  the  return  of  Christ  will  end 
the  present  world  is  still  part  of  general  Christian  teaching ; 
but  the  actual  lapse  of  nineteen  centuries  has  proved  so 
plainly  that  we  have  to  reckon  with  long  reaches  of  time, 
that  this  expectation  deters  very  few  from  taking  a  long  look 
ahead  in  all  practical  affairs.  There  are,  indeed,  a  number  of 
Christian  bodies  and  a  great  number  of  individuals  who  have 
systematized  the  apocalyptic  ideas  of  later  Judaism  and  early 
Christianity  and  have  made  them  fundamental  in  their 
religious  thought.  They  are  placing  themselves  artificially 
in  the  attitude  of  mind  which  primitive  Christianity  took 
naturally.  They  are  among  the  most  devout  and  earnest 
people.  By  their  devotional  and  missionary  literature  they 
exert  a  wide  influence.  They  share  with  splendid  vigor  in 
evangelistic  work,  because  evangelism  saves  individuals  for 
the  coming  of  the  Lord,  and  in  foreign  missionary  work, 
because  it  is  an  express  condition  that  the  Lord  will  not  re- 
turn "until  the  gospel  has  been  preached  to  all  nations." 
They  take  a  lively  interest  in  the  destructive  tendencies  of 
modern  life,  because  these  are  "signs  of  the  times"  which  her- 
ald the  end ;  but  they  do  not  feel  called  to  counteract  them. 
Such  an  effort  would  be  predestined  to  failure,  because  the 
present  world  is  doomed  to  rush  through  increasing  corruption 


THE    WORK   OF    SOCIAL    REGONSTRUCTION  203 

to  moral  bankruptcy,  and  Christ  alone  by  his  coming  can  save 
it.  Historical  pessimism  is  generally  woven  into  the  texture 
of  this  pattern  of  thought,  and  it  is  this  pessimistic  interpreta- 
tion of  history,  more  than  the  somewhat  academic  expectation 
of  the  immediate  return  of  Christ,  which  neutralizes  the 
interest  of  this  school  of  thought  in  comprehensive  moral 
reformation.  So  far  as  the  influence  of  this  drift  goes,  it  is  a 
dead  weight  against  any  effort  to  mobilize  the  moral  forces  of 
Christianity  to  share  in  the  modem  social  movement.  This 
is  all  the  more  pathetic  because  these  men  have  a  nobler 
ingredient  of  social  hope  for  humanity  than  ordinary  Chris- 
tians. But  outside  of  this  sphere  of  thought  the  hope  of  the 
immediate  millennium,  which  was  once  so  influential,  is  no 
longer  a  factor  to  deter  Christians  from  their  wider  mission 
to  society. 

The  primitive  attitude  of  fear  and  distrust  toward  the 
State  has  passed  away.  We  do  not  regard  the  existing  civil- 
ization and  its  governments  as  hostile  to  Christianity.  The 
ancient  feeling  that  demon  powers  inspire  the  State  has 
vanished  with  the  belief  in  demons.  Some  to-day  regard  the 
State  as  the  organization  of  secular  life,  which,  though  in  a 
sphere  apart  from  religion,  is  good  and  useful  in  its  way. 
Others  take  the  more  religious  view  of  it,  that  it  is  one  of  the 
divinely  constituted  factors  to  train  the  race  for  the  kingdom 
of  God,  of  equal  dignity  with  the  family  and  the  Church. 
Under  either  conception  it  is  possible  to  cooperate  with  it  and 
turn  the  regenerative  moral  power  of  religion  into  the  chan- 
nels of  organized  civil  life. 

The  other-worldliness  of  Christian  desire  is  strangely 
diminished.  We  all  believe  in  immortality,  but  we  are  not 
weary  of  this  world.     The  longing  to  die  and  go  to  heaven  is 


204  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

not  regarded  as  a  test  of  spiritual  life  as  it  used  to  be,  even 
within  the  memory  of  many  of  us.  To  us  salvation  means 
^victory  over  sin  rather  than  escape  from  hell.  This  change 
of  attitude  dignifies  the  present  life.  It  is  not,  then,  too  pal- 
try for  earnest  effort.  The  hope  of  personal  salvation  after 
death  no  longer  monopolizes  the  Christian  hope.  There  is  now 

^   room  beside  it  for  the  social  hope. 

The  ascetic  and  monastic  ideal,  which  dominated  Christian 
life  for  a  thousand  years  and  more,  has  disappeared  almost 
completely.  If  the  saints  that  lie  buried  under  the  stone  floor 
of  some  ancient  European  church  could  rise  and  listen  to  a 
modern  sermon,  they  would  find  their  gospel  turned  upside 
down.  Instead  of  praise  of  virginity,  they  would  hear  eulogies 
of  family  life.  Instead  of  the  call  to  poverty,  they  would  hear 
the  praise  of  Christianity  because  it  makes  men  and  nations 
prosperous  and  wealthy.  Instead  of  exhortations  to  wear  their 
flesh  thin  with  fasting  and  vigil,  they  would  be  invited  to 

v^  membership  in  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  with  gymnasium  and  bath  to 
keep  their  flesh  in  a  glow  of  health.  If  the  old  gospel  of 
individualism  should  hereafter  change  into  the  gospel  of 
socialism,  the  change  would  not  be  half  as  great  as  that  in- 
volved in  the  surrender  of  the  ascetic  ideal  of  the  Christian 
life.  Some  ascetic  practices  still  linger  in  the  observance  of 
Lent.  The  ascetic  notion  occasionally  crops  up  that  men 
are  best  turned  to  God  by  affliction,  and  that  revivals  follow 
on  hard  times.  The  distrust  of  the  intellectual  and  artistic 
and  pohtical  life  in  English  evangelicalism  and  German 
pietism,  the  retirement  of  the  Christian  within  the  untroubled 
realm  of  family  and  business  life,  is  a  diluted  Protestant  form 
of  the  ascetic  flight  from  the  world.  The  Roman  Church,  by 
force  of  its  strong  mediaeval  traditions,  still  exalts  the  monastic 


THE    WORK   OF    SOCIAL    RECONSTRUCTION  205 

life  as  the  crown  of  religious  living;  but  its  mediaeval  saints 
would  think  their  Church  was  dead  if  they  saw  the  scarcity  of 
monks  in  America.  The  current  of  modem  religion  does  not 
run  away  from  the  world,  but  toward  it.  Religion  no  longer 
spends  its  immense  force  in  tearing  men  out  of  social  life  and 
isolating  them  from  family,  property,  and  State.  Therefore 
it  is  now  free  to  direct  that  force  toward  the  Christianizing  of 
the  common  life.  It  no  longer  establishes  monastic  com- 
munities to  live  the  truly  Christian  and  communistic  life. 
Therefore  it  ought  now  to  make  the  life  of  the  entire  com-  y 
munity  truly  Christian.  If  the  disappearance  of  ascetic  en- 
thusiasm means  the  evaporation  of  Christian  self-sacrifice, 
it  would  mean  a  net  loss  and  a  surrender  of  Christianity  to 
worldliness.  If  it  means  that  the  old  enthusiasm  is  now 
directed  toward  the  moral  regeneration  of  society,  it  would 
mean  a  new  era  for  humanity. 

Ceremonialism,  which  early  clogged  the  ethical  vigor  of 
Christianity,  was  broken  in  the  Reformation  and  is  slowly  >j 
dying  out.  Greek  and  Roman  Catholicism  are  faithful  to  it 
by  virtue  of  their  consen-atism,  but  even  there  it  is  no  longer 
a  creative  force.  There  are  ritualistic  drifts  in  a  few  Protes- 
tant bodies,  but  they  are  not  part  of  modem  life,  but  romantic 
reactions  toward  the  past.  The  present  tendency  to  a  more 
omate  and  liturgical  worship  in  the  radical  Protestant  de- 
nominations of  America  is  aesthetic  and  not  sacramental  in 
motive.  It  is  proof  that  sacramentalism  is  so  dead  that 
Protestant  churches  no  longer  need  to  fear  the  forms  that 
might  revive  it.  The  priest  is  dying.  The  prophet  can 
prepare  to  enter  his  heritage,  provided  the  prophet  himself 
is  still  alive  with  his  ancient  message  of  an  ethical  and  social 
service  of  God. 


2o6  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

It  is  a  commonplace  that  Christianity  has  grown  less 
dogmatic.  There  is  probably  just  as  much  earnest  convic- 
tion, but  it  is  modified  by  greater  respect  for  the  conviction 
of  others  and  by  a  deeper  interest  in  right  living.  Men  and 
churches  fellowship  freely  with  little  regard  to  doctrinal 
uniformity.  One  of  the  chief  anti-social  forces  has  therewith 
disappeared  from  Christianity,  and  the  subsidence  of  the 
speculative  interest  has  to  that  extent  left  Christianity  free  to 
devote  its  thought  to  ethical  and  social  problems. 

Christianity  in  the  past  was  almost  wholly  churchly.  The 
organized  Church  absorbed  the  devotion,  the  ability,  and  the 
wealth  of  its  members.  To  some  degree  that  is  still  true. 
The  churches  need  time  and  money  and  must  strive  to  get 
their  share.  For  very  many  men  and  women  the  best  service 
they  can  render  to  the  kingdom  of  God  is  really  through  the 
local  church  and  its  activities.  In  some  measure,  religion  is 
still  supposed  to  be  bounded  by  the  Church.  What  is  con- 
nected with  the  churches  is  religious ;  what  is  apart  from  them 
is  supposed  to  be  secular.  Even  very  worldly  affairs,  like 
bazaars  and  oyster  suppers,  are  religious  if  they  raise  the  sup- 
port or  increase  the  popularity  of  a  church.  On  the  other 
hand,  efforts  to  fight  tuberculosis  or  secure  parks  and  play- 
grounds are  viewed  as  secular,  because  they  are  not  con- 
nected with  a  church.  But  there  has  been  a  great  change. 
The  wiser  leaders  of  Christianity  do  not  desire  to  monopolize 
the  services  of  Christian  men  for  the  churches,  but  rejoice  in 
seeing  the  power  of  religion  flow  out  in  the  service  of  justice 
and  mercy.  Religion  is  less  an  institution  and  more  a  diffused 
force  than  ever  before.  The  brazen  vessel  of  the  Church  was 
fatally  cracked  and  broken  by  the  Reformation,  and  its  con- 
tents have  ever  since  been  leaking  away  into  secular  life. 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  207 

The  State,  the  schools,  the  charitable  organizations,  are  now 
doing  what  the  Church  used  to  do.  The  Roman  Church 
continues  its  traditions  of  churchly  authority  and  exclusive- 
ness.  Some  Protestant  bodies  try  with  more  or  less  success  to 
imitate  her  role,  but  Protestantism  cannot  compete  with  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  churchliness.  In  spite  of  itself, 
Protestantism  has  lost  its  ecclesiastical  character  and  author- 
ity. But  at  the  same  time  Protestant  Christianity  has  gained 
amazingly  in  its  spiritual  effectiveness  on  society.  The 
Protestant  nations  have  leaped  forward  in  wealth,  education, 
and  poHtical  preponderance.  The  unfettering  of  intellectual 
and  economic  abihty  under  the  influence  of  this  diffused  force 
of  Christianity  is  an  historical  miracle.  Protestantism  has 
even  protestantized  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  The  Ro- 
man Church  crumbles  away  before  it  in  our  country  and  can 
only  save  its  adherents  by  quarantining  its  children  in  pa- 
rochial schools  and  its  men  and  women  in  separate  social  and 
benevolent  societies.  The  churches  are  profoundly  needed 
as  generators  of  the  rehgious  spirit ;  but  they  are  no  longer  the 
sole  sphere  of  action  for  the  religious  spirit.  They  exist  to 
create  the  force  which  builds  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth, 
the  better  humanity.  By  becoming  less  churchly  Christian- 
ity has,  in  fact,  become  fitter  to  regenerate  the  common  life. 
Modem  Christianity  everywhere  tends  toward  the  separa- 
tion of  Church  and  State.  But  when  the  Church  is  no  longer 
dependent  on  the  State  for  its  appointments  and  its  income 
and  the  execution  of  its  will,  it  is  by  that  much  freer  to  cham- 
pion the  better  order  against  the  chief  embodiment  of  the 
present  order.  We  shall  see  later  that  even  when  Church  and 
State  are  separated,  the  Church  may  still  be  in  bondage  to 
the  powers  of  the  world.     It  can  still  be  used  as  a  spiritual 


2o8  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

posse  to  read  the  Riot  Act  to  the  rebeUious  minds  of  men. 
But  as  the  formal  control  of  the  Church  by  the  State  slackens, 
and  the  clerical  interests  are  withdrawn  from  politics,  the 
Church  is  freer  to  act  as  the  tribune  of  the  people,  and  the 
State  is  more  open  to  the  moral  and  humanizing  influence  of 
Christianity.  At  the  same  time  the  political  emancipation 
and  increasing  democracy  of  the  people  is  bound  to  draw  the 
larger  social  and  political  problems  within  the  interests  of 
the  masses,  and  there  is  sure  to  be  a  silent  extension  of 
the  religious  interest  and  motive  to  social  and  political 
duties. 

In  the  past  the  Church  was  dominated  by  the  clergy  and 
it  was  monarchical  in  its  organization.  The  Reformation 
brought  a  slow  turn  on  both  points.  The  power  of  the 
hierarchy  was  broken ;  the  laity  began  to  rise  to  increased 
participation  in  church  life.  That  in  itself  insured  an  in- 
creasing influence  of  Christianity  on  secular  life.  At  the 
same  time  the  Protestant  bodies,  in  varying  degrees,  reverted 
toward  democracy  in  organization.  Those  Protestant  bodies 
which  constitute  the  bulk  of  Protestantism  in  America  and  of 
the  free  churches  in  England  all  have  the  essence  of  church 
democracy.  Even  the  churches  with  episcopal  government 
are  affected  by  the  spirit  of  democratic  self-government. 
The  Roman  Church  in  America  itself  has  not  escaped  this 
influence.  All  this  lays  the  churches  open  to  democratic 
sympathies,  provided  they  are  not  merely  organizations  of 
the  possessing  classes. 

The  intellectual  prerequisites  for  social  reconstruction  were 
lacking  formerly.  They  are  now  at  hand.  Travel  and  his- 
tory are  breaking  the  spell  of  existing  conditions  and  are 
telling  even  the  common  man  that  social  relations  are  plastic 


THE   WORK   OF   SOCIAL   RECONSTRUCTION  209 

and  variable.     We  have  the  new  sciences  of  political  economy        v 
and  sociology  to  guide  us.    It  is  true,  political  economy  in  the 
past  has  misled  us  often,  but  it  too  is  leaving  its  sinful  laissez- 
jaire  ways  and  preparing  to  serve  the  Lord  and  human        \ 
brotherhood.     All  the  biblical  sciences  are  now  using  the 
historical  method  and  striving  to  put  us  in  the  position  of  the       y    v^ 
original  readers  of  each  biblical  book.     But  as  the  Bible 
becomes  more  lifelike,  it  becomes  more  social.      We  used       ^^ 
to  see  the  sacred  landscape  through  allegorical  interpretation 
as  through  a  piece  of  yellow  bottle-glass.     It  was  very  golden 
and  wonderful,  but   very  much  apart   from  our  everyday 
modem  life.     The   Bible  hereafter  will  be   "the  people's 
book"  in  a  new  sense.     For  the  first  time  in  religious  history 
we  have  the  possibility  of  so  directing  religious  energy  by 
scientific  knowledge   that  a  comprehensive  and  continuous 
reconstruction  of  social  life  in  the  name  of  God  is  within  the 
bounds  of  human  possibility. 

To  a  religious  man  the  contemplation  of  the  larger  move-  Conclusioa 
ments  of  history  brings  a  profound  sense  .of  God's  presence 
and  overruling  power.  ''Behind  the  dim  unknown  standeth 
God  within  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above  his  own."  * 
Christ  is  immanent  in  humanity  and  is  slowly  disciplining 
the  nations  and  lifting  them  to  share  in  his  spirit.  By  great 
processes  of  self- purification  the  alien  infusions  in  Chris- 
tianity have  been  eliminated,  and  Christianity  itself  is  being 
converted  to  Christ. 

But  all  these  larger  movements,  by  which  the  essential 
genius  of  Christianity  is  being  set  free,  have  also  equipped 
it  for  a  conscious  regenerating  influence  on  the  common  life 

*  James  Russell  Lowell,  "The  Present  Crisis." 
P 


2IO  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

of  the  race.     It  is  now  fitter  for  its  social  mission  than  ever 
before. 

At  the  same  time  when  Christianity  has  thus  attained  to 
its  adolescence  and  moral  maturity,  there  is  a  piercing  call 
from  the  world  about  it,  summoning  all  moral  strength  and 
religious  heroism  to  save  the  Christian  world  from  social 
strangulation  and  death.  That  call  will  be  the  subject  of 
the  next  chapter.  The  converging  of  these  two  lines  of 
development  is  providential.  We  are  standing  at  the  turn- 
ing of  the  ways.  We  are  actors  in  a  great  historical  drama. 
It  rests  upon  us  to  decide  if  a  new  era  is  to  dawn  in  the 
transformation  of  the  world  into  the  kingdom  of  God,  or  if 
Western  civilization  is  to  descend  to  the  graveyard  of  dead 
civilizations  and  God  will  have  to  try  once  more. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   PRESENT   CRISIS 

When  the  Nineteenth  Century  died,  its  Spirit  descended  to 
the  vaulted  chamber  of  the  Past,  where  the  Spirits  of  the  dead 
Centuries  sit  on  granite  thrones  together.  When  the  new- 
comer entered,  all  turned  toward  him  and  the  Spirit  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century  spoke:  "Tell  thy  tale,  brother.  Give 
us  word  of  the  human  kind  we  left  to  thee." 

"I  am  the  Spirit  of  the  Wonderful  Century.  I  gave  man 
the  mastery  over  nature.  Discoveries  and  inventions,  which 
lighted  the  black  space  of  the  past  like  lonely  stars,  have 
clustered  in  a  Milky  Way  of  radiance  under  my  rule.  One 
man  does  by  the  touch  of  his  hand  what  the  toil  of  a  thousand 
slaves  never  did.  Knowledge  has  unlocked  the  mines  of 
wealth,  and  the  hoarded  wealth  of  to-day  creates  the  vaster 
wealth  of  to-morrow.  Man  has  escaped  the  slavery  of 
Necessity  and  is  free. 

"I  freed  the  thoughts  of  men.    They  face  the  facts  and 
know.    Their  knowledge  is  common  to  all.    The  deeds  of 
the  East  at  eve  are  known  in  the  West  at  mom.     They  send      v 
their  whispers  under  the  seas  and  across  the  clouds. 

"I  broke  the  chains  of  bigotry  and  despotism.     I  made         \< 
men  free  and  equal.     Every  man  feels  the  worth  of  his  man- 
hood. 

"I  have  touched  the  summit  of  history.  I  did  for  man- 
kind what  none  of  you  did  before.  They  are  rich.  They  are 
wise.     They  are  free." 


212  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE   SOCIAL    CRISIS 

The  Spirits  of  the  dead  Centuries  sat  silent,  with  troubled 
eyes.    At  last  the  Spirit  of  the  First  Century  spoke  for  all. 

"We  all  spoke  proudly  when  we  came  here  in  the  flush  of 
our  deeds,  and  thou  more  proudly  than  we  all.  But  as  we  sit 
and  thmk  of  what  was  before  us,  and  what  has  come  after  us, 
shame  and  guilt  bear  down  our  pride.  Your  words  sound  as 
if  the  redemption  of  man  had  come  at  last.     Has  it  come? 

"You  have  made  men  rich.  Tell  us,  is  none  in  pain  with 
hunger  to-day  and  none  in  fear  of  hunger  for  to-morrow? 
Do  all  children  grow  up  fair  of  limb  and  trained  for  thought 
and  action?  Do  none  die  before  their  time?  Has  the 
mastery  of  nature  made  men  free  to  enjoy  their  lives  and 
loves,  and  to  live  the  higher  life  of  the  mind  ? 

"You  have  made  men  wise.  Are  they  wise  or  cunning? 
Have  they  learned  to  restrain  their  bodily  passions?  Have 
they  learned  to  deal  with  their  fellows  in  justice  and  love? 

"You  have  set  them  free.  Are  there  none,  then,  who  toil 
for  others  against  their  will?  Are  all  men  free  to  do  the 
work  they  love  best? 

"You  have  made  men  one.  Are  there  no  barriers  of  class 
to  keep  man  and  maid  apart?  Does  none  rejoice  in  the 
cause  that  makes  the  many  moan  ?  Do  men  no  longer  spill 
the  blood  of  men  for  their  ambition  and  the  sweat  of  men  for 
their  greed?" 

As  the  Spirit  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  listened,  his  head 
sank  to  his  breast. 

"Your  shame  is  already  upon  me.  My  great  cities  are  as 
yours  were.  My  milhons  live  from  hand  to  mouth.  Those 
who  toil  longest  have  least.  My  thousands  sink  exhausted 
before  their  days  are  half  spent.  My  human  wreckage 
multiplies.     Class  faces  class  in  sullen  distrust.    Their  free- 


THE   PRESENT  CRISIS  213 

dom  and  knowledge  has  only  made  men  keener  to  suffer. 
Give  me  a  seat  among  you,  and  let  me  think  why  it  has  been 
so." 

The  others  turned  to  the  Spirit  of  the  First  Century, 
"Your  promised  redemption  is  long  in  coming." 

"But  it  will  come,"  he  replied. 

Man  has  always  suffered  want  and  the  fear  of  want.    His  The  indus- 

j  1  1  f  ^  I.  J    trial  revolu- 

dangers  have  always  come  from  two  sources,  —  nature  and  jjo^ 
man. 

Drought  or  flood,  locusts  or  wild  beasts,  swept  away  his 
crops  or  herds.  Earthquake  and  fire  shook  his  home  to  ruin 
or  ate  up  in  the  flare  of  an  hour  the  toil  of  a  lifetime.  But 
there  is  a  disciplining  power  in  the  adversities  of  nature. 
If  man  wrestles  bravely  with  her,  she  will  turn  to  bless  him 
and  make  him  more  a  man.  By  learning  nature's  laws  and 
obeying  them,  he  makes  nature  obey  him. 

The  really  grinding  and  destructive  enemy  of  man  is  man.  -^ 
The  roaming  savage  in  famine  and  superstition  hunted  and 
ate  his  enemy  as  he  hunted  the  beast.  When  men  settled 
down  to  till  the  fields,  they  captured  prisoners  and  made  them 
drudge  for  them  as  slaves,  just  as  they  domesticated  the  horse 
and  ox  and  made  them  work.  Strong  peoples  conquered  the 
weak  and  exacted  forced  labor  or  rent  for  the  use  of  the  land 
which  the  serf  had  once  owned.  Exploitation  has  changed 
its  form  from  one  stage  of  society  to  another,  but  it  has 
always  existed.  "From  the  beginning  until  now  man  has 
divided  his  fellows  into  those  who  were  to  be  fed  and  those 
who  were,  figuratively  at  least,  to  be  eaten."  ^ 

There  has  always  been  social  misery.     The  pyramids  of 

'  Ely,  "Outlines  of  Economics,"  p.  5. 


214  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Egypt  were  built  on  it;  the  Roman  roads  were  cemented 
with  it.  But  to-day  we  face  a  new  form  of  it,  which  affronts 
all  just  conceptions  of  human  life  in  new  and  peculiar  ways. 

•  Modem  poverty,  strangely  enough,  began  when  man  for  the 

•  first  time  in  history  began  to  escape  from  poverty. 

The  American  Declaration  of  Independence  in  1776  and 
the  French  Revolution  in  1789  were  the  birth  of  modern 
democracy.  But  about  the  same  time  another  revolution 
set  in  beside  which  these  great  events  were  puny.^  In 
1769  James  Watt  harnessed  the  expansive  power  of  steam  for 
human  use.  Hitherto  man  had  used  only  the  localized  power 
of  falling  water  and  the  fitful  power  of  blowing  wind.  The 
only  ready  force  had  been  the  vital  energy  of  man  and  beast. 
Now  at  last  the  weary  hum  of  the  hand-spindle  and  the  pound- 
ing of  the  hand-loom  could  cease.  Nature  bent  her  willing 
neck  to  the  yoke,  and  the  economic  production  of  our  race 
took  a  leap  forward  —  as  when  a  car  has  been  pushed  forward 
by  hand  on  the  level,  and  now  grips  the  cable  and  rushes  up 
a  steep  incline.  If  some  angel  with  prophetic  foresight  had 
witnessed  that  epoch,  would  he  not  have  winged  his  way 
back  to  heaven  to  tell  God  that  human  suffering  was  drawing 
to  its  end  ? 

Instead  of  that  a  long-drawn  wail  of  misery  followed 
wherever  the  power-machine  came.  It  swept  the  bread  from 
men's  tables  and  the  pride  from  their  hearts. 

Hitherto  each  master  of  a  handicraft,  with  his  family  and 
a  few  apprentices  and  journeymen  about  him,  had  plied  his 
trade  in  his  home,  owner  of  his  simple  tools  and  master  of  his 
profits.    His  workmen  ate  at  his  table,  married  his  daughters, 

J  *  See  Arnold  Toynbee,  "The  Industrial  Revolution  in  England."  For  a 
popular  summary  see  R.  T.  Ely,  "  Outlines  of  Economics,"  Chaps.  I-IX. 


THE   PRESENT    CRISIS  215 

and  hoped  to  become  masters  themselves  when  their  time 
of  education  was  over.  He  worked  for  customers  whom  he 
knew,  and  honest  work  was  good  poHcy,  He  suppHed  a 
definite  demand.  The  rules  of  his  guild  and  the  laws  of  his. 
city  barred  out  alien  or  reckless  competition  which  wouM 
undermine  his  trade.  So  men  lived  simply  and  rudely. 
They  had  no  hope  of  millions  to  lure  them,  nor  the  fear  of 
poverty  to  haunt  them.  They  lacked  many  of  the  luxuries 
accessible  even  to  the  poor  to-day,  but  they  had  a  large 
degree  of  security,  independence,  and  hope.  And  man  liveth 
not  by  cake  alone.^ 

Then  arrived  the  power-machine,  and  the  old  economic 
world  tottered  and  fell  like  San  Francisco  in  1906.  The 
machine  was  too  expensive  to  be  set  up  in  the  old  home 
workshops  and  owned  by  every  master.  If  the  guilds  had 
been  wise  enough  to  purchase  and  operate  machinery  in 
common,  they  might  have  effected  a  cooperative  organization 
of  industry  in  which  all  could  have  shared  the  increased 
profits  of  machine  production.  As  it  was,  the  wealthy  and 
enterprising  and  ruthless  seized  the  new  opening,  turned  out 
a  rapid  flow  of  products,  and  of  necessity  underbid  the  others 
in  marketing  their  goods.  The  old  customs  and  regula- 
tions which  had  forbidden  or  limited  free  competition  were 
brushed  away.  New  economic  theories  were  developed 
which  sanctioned  what  was  going  on  and  secured  the  sup- 
port of  public  opinion  and  legislation  for  those  who  were 
driving  the  machine  through  the  framework  of  the  social 
structure. 

The  distress  of  the  displaced  workers  was  terrible.     In 

*  See  Thorold  Rogers,  "  Six  Centuries  of  Work  and  Wages  " ;  L.  Brentano, 
"  On  the  History  and  Development  of  Guilds." 


2l6  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

blind  agony  they  mobbed  the  factories  and  destroyed  the 
machines  which  were  destroying  them.  But  the  men  who 
owned  the  machines,  owned  the  law.  In  England  the  death 
penalty  was  put  on  the  destruction  of  machinery.  Sullenly 
the  old  masters  had  to  bow  their  necks  to  the  yoke.  They 
had  to  leave  their  own  shops  and  their  old  independence  and 
come  to  the  machine  for  work  and  bread.  They  had  been 
masters;  henceforth  they  had  a  master.  The  former  com- 
panionship of  master  and  workmen,  working  together  in 
the  little  shops,  was  gone.  Two  classes  were  created  and  a 
wide  gulf  separated  them :  on  the  one  hand  the  employer, 
whose  hands  were  white  and  whose  power  was  great ;  on  the 
other  the  wage-earner,  who  lived  in  a  cottage  and  could  only 
in  rare  and  lessening  instances  hope  to  own  a  great  shop  with 
its  costly  machinery.^ 

This  disintegration  of  the  old  economic  life  has  slowly 
spread,  reaching  one  trade  after  the  other,  one  nation  after 
the  other.  To-day  it  is  working  its  way  in  Russia  and  India. 
Longfellow,  in  his  "Village  Blacksmith,"  has  described  a 
master  of  the  old  kind.  "The  smith,  a  mighty  man  was  he, 
with  strong  and  sinewy  hands."  To-day  one  son  of  the  smith 
is  nailing  machine-made  horseshoes  on  with  machine-made 
nails,  and  repairing  the  iron-work  of  farmers  which  is  wrought 
elsewhere.  The  other  sons  have  gone  into  town  and  are 
factory  hands.  One  worked  in  the  fluff-filled  air  of  a  cotton 
mill  and  slept  in  a  dark  bedroom.     He  died  of  consumption. 

Thus  went  the  old  independence  and  the  approximate 
equality  of  the  old  life.  The  old  security  disappeared,  too. 
A  man  could  not  even  be  sure  of  the  bare  wages  which  he 
received  for  his  toil.     The  machine  worked  with  such  head- 

*  F.  Engels,  "  Condition  of  the  Working  Class  in  England  in  1844." 


THE  PRESENT   CRISIS  21 7 

long  speed  that  it  glutted  the  market  with  its  goods  and 
stopped  its  own  wheels  with  the  mass  of  its  own  output. 
Periodical  prostrations  of  industry  began  with  speculative 
production,  and  a  new  kind  of  famine  became  familiar,  — 
the  famine  for  work. 

The  machine  required  deftness  rather  than  strength.  The 
slender  fingers  of  women  and  children  sufficed  for  it,  and  they 
were  cheaper  than  men.  So  men  were  forced  out  of  work  by 
the  competition  of  their  own  wives  and  children,  and  saw  their 
loved  ones  wilt  and  die  under  the  relentless  drag  of  the 
machine.  The  saying  that  "a,  man's  foes  shall  be  they  of 
his  own  household,"  received  a  new  application. 

Under  the  old  methods  industry  could  be  scattered  over  the 
country.  The  machine  now  compelled  population  to  settle 
about  it.  It  was  the  creator  of  the  modem  city.  It  piled  the 
poor  together  in  crowded  tenements  at  night  and  in  unsanitary 
factories  during  the  day,  and  intensified  all  the  diseases  that 
come  through  crowding.  Poverty  leaped  forward  simulta- 
neously with  wealth.  From  1760  to  1818  the  population 
of  England  increased  seventy  per  cent;  the  poor  relief  in- 
creased five  hundred  thirty  per  cent. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  incredible  paradox  of  modem  life. 
The  instrument  by  which  all  humanity  could  rise  from  want 
and  the  fear  of  want  actually  submerged  a  large  part  of  the 
people  in  perpetual  want  and  fear.  When  wealth  was 
multiplying  beyond  all  human  precedent,  an  immense  body 
of  pauperism  with  all  its  allied  misery  was  growing  up  and 
becoming  chronic.  England  was  foremost  in  the  introduc- 
tion of  machine  industry,  and  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  one  of  the  darkest  times  in  the  economic  history 
of  England.     While  the  nation  was  attaining  unparalleled 


2l8  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

wealth  and  power,  many  of  its  people  were  horribly  destitute 
and  degraded.  It  is  hardly  likely  that  any  social  revolu- 
tion, by  which  hereafter  capitalism  may  be  overthrown,  will 
cause  more  injustice,  more  physical  suffering,  and  more 
V  heartache  than  the  industrial  revolution  by  which  capitalism 
rose  to  power. 

That  such  an  evil  turn  could  be  given  to  an  event  that  held 
such  a  power  for  good,  is  a  crushing  demonstration  that  the 
moral  forces  in  humanity  failed  to  keep  pace  with  its  intel- 
lectual and  economic  development.  Men  learned  to  make 
wealth  much  faster  than  they  learned  to  distribute  it  justly. 
Their  eye  for  profit  was  keener  than  their  ear  for  the  voice  of 
God  and  humanity.  That  is  the  great  sin  of  modern  hu- 
V  manity,  and  unless  we  repent,  we  shall  perish  by  that  sin. 
But  the  first  call  to  repentance  comes  to  all  those  who  have  had 
this  defective  moral  insight  of  humanity  under  their  training, 
and  whose  duty  it  was  to  give  a  voice  to  the  instincts  of 
righteousness  and  brotherhood. 

The  first  dire  effects  of  the  industrial  revolution  have  been 
greatly  mitigated  in  European  countries:  partly  by  the 
defensive  organization  of  the  workers;  partly  by  the  inter- 
position of  the  State;  partly  by  the  awakened  conscience  of 
the  people ;  and  chiefly  by  the  fear  of  the  Social  Democracy. 
In  our  own  country  the  machine  in  the  past  wrought  no  such 
harm.  Our  industries  were  in  their  infancy  when  the  ma- 
chine arrived,  and  there  was  no  old  economic  structure  for  it 
to  destroy.  Our  people  were  an  emigrant  folk,  less  rooted  in 
the  ancestral  soil  than  any  other  nation,  and  have  been  ready 
and  able  to  seek  employment  elsewhere  when  economic 
readjustments  broke  up  their  old  employment.  What 
Kipling  calls  the  ''hideous  versatihty"  of  Americans,  which  is 


THE  PRESENT  CRISIS  219 

a  result  of  life  in  a  new  country,  has  made  it  easy  to  turn 
from  one  trade  to  another,  or  to  learn  the  work  with  a  new 
machine.  Above  all,  our  free  and  cheap  land  has  been  a 
constant  outlet  for  labor,  and  long  kept  labor  scarce  and 
wages  high. 

But  there  is  nothing  in  the  nature  of  our  country  that  will 
permanently  exempt  us  from  the  social  misery  created  by  the 
industrial  revolution  elsewhere.  Popular  orators  have  often 
asserted  that  the  conditions  of  the  effete  monarchies  could 
never  come  to  a  people  with  free  institutions  like  ours.  De- 
velopments in  recent  years  have  given  them  the  lie.  Capital- 
ism is  no  respecter  of  governments;  it  will  flourish  in  a 
republic  as  well  as  in  a  monarchy  —  perhaps  better.  The 
people  cannot  eat  the  ballot.  It  will  serve  them  only  if  they 
are  wise  and  strong  enough  to  use  it  as  a  shield  for  their  own 
defence  and  as  a  sword  against  the  enemies  of  the  republic. 
The  influences  which  formerly  protected  us  and  gave  us  a  cer- 
tain immunity  from  social  misery  are  losing  their  force.  We 
are  now  running  the  rapids  faster  than  any  other  nation.  We 
do  everything  more  strenuously  and  recklessly  than  others. 
Our  machinery  is  speeded  faster;  our  capital  centralizes 
faster;  we  use  up  human  Hfe  more  carelessly;  we  are  less 
hampered  by  custom  and  prejudice.  If  we  are  once  headed 
toward  a  social  catastrophe,  we  shall  get  there  ahead  of 
schedule  time.  No  preventives  against  the  formation  of 
social  classes  wTitten  in  a  paper  constitution  can  long  save 
us  from  the  iron  wedge  which  capitahsm  drives  through 
society.  The  existence  of  at  least  two  distinct  classes  is  in- 
herent in  the  nature  of  capitalistic  organization  of  industry, 
and  essential  to  its  very  existence.  Gustav  Schmoller,  the 
eminent  professor  of  political  economy  at  Berlin,  says  in  his 


220  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

great  work,  "All  experts  agree  that  no  country  has  such  a 
plutocracy  as  the  United  States."^ 

The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  to  bring  the  present  situa- 
tion before  us  with  a  few  rapid  strokes  in  order  to  create  a 
realizing  sense  of  the  present  crisis.  The  main  concern  of  the 
discussion  will  be  with  the  moral  element  contained  in  the 
condition  of  society  and  in  its  drifts.  In  former  chapters  I 
have  shown  that  the  moral  power  generated  by  the  Christian 
religion  is  available  for  the  task  of  social  regeneration.  I 
wish  here  to  show  that  it  is  needed,  fully  and  immediately,  if 
I     our  Christian  civilization  is  to  stand  and  advance. 

In  the  nature  of  the  case  the  discussion  will  be  a  critique 
of  present  conditions.  It  will  have  to  dwell  on  the  ad- 
verse symptoms,  like  the  diagnosis  of  a  physician.  If  he  is 
dealing  with  the  breakdown  of  the  digestive  or  nervous 
apparatus,  he  may  fail  to  mention  that  the  bones  are  all 
sound  and  that  the  patient  has  a  splendid  head  of  hair. 
Personally  I  am  not  a  despiser  of  my  age  and  its  achieve- 
ments. There  is  no  other  age  in  which  I  should  prefer  to 
have  lived.  The  very  fact  that  we  can  feel  our  social  wrongs 
so  keenly  and  discuss  them  calmly  and  without  fear  of  social 
hatred,  is  one  of  the  highest  tributes  to  be  paid  to  our  age. 
My  appeal  is  made  hopefully  to  the  educated  reason  and  the 
moral  insight  of  modern  Christian  men. 

The  land  ^        Next  to  life  itself  the  greatest  gift  of  God  to  man  is  the  land 
and  the         from  which  all  hfe  is  nourished.     The  character  of  a  nation 

people. 

cannot  be  understood  apart  from  the  country  and  climate  in 
which  it  lives.     The  social  prosperity,  the  morality,  the  rise  or 

*  G.  Schmoller,  "Grundriss  der  allgemeinen  Volkswirtschaftslehre,"  II, 
453- 


THE    PRESENT  CRISIS  221 

decline  of  a  people,  always  fundamentally  depend  on  the  wis- 
dom and  justice  with  which  the  land  is  distributed  and  used. 

In  our  country  the  land  in  its  vastness  and  abundance,  its 
variety  and  wealth,  has  been  one  of  the  most  sanitary  in- 
fluences in  our  national  hfe.  The  mass  of  independent 
farmers  have  been  and  still  are  the  moral  backbone  of  our 
nation.  The  "  embattled  farmers  "  won  our  independence  and 
formed  the  incomparable  armies  of  our  Ci\il  War  on  both 
sides,  just  as  the  marv^ellous  army  of  Cromwell  was  com- 
posed of  the  sons  of  EngUsh  yeomen.  It  was  our  land,  fully 
as  much  as  our  institutions,  which  absorbed  and  assimilated 
the  mass  of  our  immigrants  in  the  past,  and  formed  an 
automatic  safety-valve  for  the  overheated  machine  of  our 
commercial  and  political  hfe. 

Our  system  has  been  to  distribute  our  farming  land  in 
severalty  as  the  private  property  of  the  family  which  tilled  it. 
This  system  has  doubtless  been  of  great  use  in  the  rapid  set- 
tlement of  our  country.  It  has  offered  the  individual  every 
incentive  to  improve  his  land  to  the  utmost,  since  it  belonged 
absolutely  to  him  and  his  descendants.  It  is  often  asserted 
that  the  secret  of  our  prosperity  lies  in  this  private  ownership 
of  land  in  contrast  to  the  land  communism  prevailing,  for 
instance,  in  the  Russian  village  community.  It  is  overlooked 
that  our  method  of  assigning  homestead  claims  from  the 
pubHc  lands  has  in  fact  been  a  kind  of  gigantic  communism 
in  land. 

Nearly  all  ancient  communities  with  which  we  have  his- 
toric connection  recognized  that  the  community  is  the  real 
owner  of  the  land.*     In  the  old  English  village  the  woodland 

*  See  the  great  works  of  Sir  Henry  Maine,  "  Village  Communities  in  the 
East  and  West"  and  "Early  History  of  Institutions." 


222  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

and  pasture  were  common  to  all.*  The  meadow-land  was 
divided  only  till  the  hay-harvest  was  over  and  then  was  com- 
mon once  more.  Only  the  plough-land  was  permanently 
divided,  but  subject  to  fresh  division  as  new  claimants  were 
admitted  to  the  commune.  Only  those  entitled  to  a  share 
in  the  common  land  were  citizens  with  full  political  rights. 
This  institution  is  one  of  the  marks  of  the  Aryan  race  and 
underlay  the  freedom  and  virility  of  the  people.  It  was  dis- 
turbed and  destroyed  by  the  same  influences  which  sapped 
the  primitive  self-government  of  the  people.  Large  remnants 
of  it  persisted  down  to  our  day  in  Europe.  Previous  to  the 
industrial  revolution  vast  tracts  of  common  land  still  existed 
in  England.  The  poor  man  could  build  on  it  free  of  rent 
and  could  till  patches  of  it  and  pasture  his  sheep  or  geese. 
In  our  own  law  the  principle  that  the  land  is  the  property  of 
the  community  —  a  principle  which  has  all  good  sense  and 
political  philosophy  on  its  side  —  is  still  embodied  in  the 
"right  of  eminent  domain."  The  State  can  condemn  private 
property  for  pubhc  uses,  because  the  community  has  a  latent 
and  superior  right  in  the  land  which  may  at  any  time  super- 
sede the  inferior  right  of  the  individual. 

But  in  general  our  law  treats  land  as  private  property. 
This  institution  is  of  comparatively  recent  origin.^  It  is  due 
mainly  to  the  influence  of  Roman  law.  Rome,  too,  in  the 
early  days  of  its  strength  had  communal  ownership.  The 
herds  were  pastured  on  the  ager  publicus.  If  new  land  was 
conquered,  the  younger  sons  got  their  allotment  there.  But 
gradually  the  wealthy  families  crowded  out  the  plebs  rustica. 
They  took  the  lion's  share  of  land  conquered.    They  turned 

*  F.  Seebohm,  "The  English  Village  Community." 
'  E.  de  Laveleye,  "De  la  propridt^." 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  223 

their  great  herds  into  the  common  pasturage.  They  used 
their  political  power  to  suppress  the  popular  demands  for  a 
redivision  of  land  and  for  a  maximum  limit  of  landed  wealth. 
Gradually  they  established  ownership  in  severalty  and  forti- 
fied it  by  law.  Then  they  sucked  up  the  small  estates  and 
undermined  the  sturdy  peasantry  of  Italy  which  had  made 
Rome  great.  Six  persons  at  one  time  owned  the  whole 
province  of  Africa.  The  great  historian  of  Rome  sums  up 
the  pernicious  effects  of  this  system  in  the  terse  sentence, 
Latijundia  perdidere  Romam,  "  the  great  estates  have  ruined 
Rome." 

This  system,  which  was  the  result  of  the  ruthless  displace- 
ment of  pubhc  rights  by  the  strong  and  one  chief  cause  for 
the  decay  of  Rome,  was,  of  course,  embodied  in  Roman  law. 
That  body  of  law  was  the  product  of  a  refined  civilization, 
and  in  precision  and  subtlety  was  far  superior  to  anything 
the  mediaeval  nations  could  produce.  For  this  reason,  and 
because  it  always  magnified  the  powders  of  the  ruling  class, 
it  was  profoundly  influential  in  the  later  development  of  law. 
Thus  the  conception  of  property  rights  which  had  helped 
to  kill  the  Empire  passed  to  other  peoples  and  everywhere 
strengthened  the  hands  of  the  strong  and  limited  the  com- 
munal rights  over  the  land.  It  was  as  if  a  rug  of  exquisite 
weave  had  been  taken  from  some  village  devastated  by 
cholera  and  had  been  carried  with  its  deadly  infection  to 
another  city. 

Our  national  homestead  system  was  like  the  old  village 
commune  in  allotting  to  every  one  who  asked  for  it  in  good 
faith  a  sufficient  portion  of  land  for  the  support  of  his  family. 
The  land  set  aside  for  the  support  of  the  public  schools  and 
the  fund  accruing  from  the  sale  of  public  lands  were  further 


224  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

communistic  features.  The  salutary  element  in  our  system 
was  not  so  much  that  the  owner  owned  his  land  so  abso- 
lutely, but  that  the  land  was  so  evenly  distributed  among 
the  people  and  was  so  accessible  to  all  who  were  able  to  use 
it. 

But  now  that  our  free  lands  are  almost  exhausted,  we  have 
come  to  the  point  where  the  element  of  injustice  in  the  system 
will  begin  to  menace  us.  The  first  comers  are  well  placed; 
but  how  about  those  who  press  up  hungry  through  our  ports 
and  through  the  gates  of  birth?  They  will  have  the  bitter 
cry  of  Esau  when  the  blessing  had  been  given  to  Jacob  and 
nothing  was  left  for  him.  Those  who  have  the  soil,  have 
that  and  their  bodies  to  work  it.  Those  who  have  no  soil, 
have  only  their  bodies,  and  they  must  work  for  the  others 
to  get  bread.  They  are  the  disinherited  children  of  our 
nation.  Of  course  in  practice  many  who  now  own  land 
will  lose  it,  and  many  who  now  have  none  will  secure  it. 
But  the  land  henceforth  belongs  to  a  limited  number,  not 
merely  for  use,  but  for  complete  possession,  and  the  ever 
increasing  remnant  will  have  no  right  in  it,  nor  income  from 
it.  What  God  gave  for  the  support  of  all,  will  be  the  special 
privilege  of  some.  Farm-land  will  more  and  more  come  to 
have  a  monopoly  value.  As  land  grows  dear,  it  will  become 
harder  for  a  young  man  without  capital  to  secure  his  first 
foothold.  He  will  have  to  mortgage  himself  heavily  or  be- 
come a  tenant.  There  will  be  two  layers  of  population  draw- 
ing their  living  from  the  land,  —  those  who  own  the  land  and 
those  who  till  it.  Our  farmers  will  become  peasants.  Their 
prosperity,  their  hopefulness  and  moral  vigor,  will  decline, 
and  therewith  the  moral  strength  of  our  nation  will  be  in- 
definitely diminished.    As  the  monopoly  value  of  farm-land 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  225 

increases,  it  will  be  a  more  profitable  form  of  investment 
for  the  huge  industrial  capital  anxiously  seeking  investment. 
Our  rich  men  will  become  large  owners  of  agricultural  lands. 
In  time  we  shall  have  three  layers  of  population  on  the  land, 
as  in  England  and  Eastern  Germany,  —  the  great  proprietor, 
the  tenant  farmer,  and  the  agricultural  laborer,  —  and  that 
means  poverty  and  ignorance  in  the  country. 

This  may  seem  a  far-fetched  fear  to  some,  just  as  thirty 
years  ago  it  seemed  an  idle  fear  that  our  great  corporations 
might  come  to  shackle  our  political  democracy.  But  com- 
mon sense  and  the  experience  of  other  nations  teach  a  lesson 
plain  enough  to  all  except  that  not  infrequent  class  which 
will  learn  only  in  the  dear  school  of  experience.  Already 
thousands  of  our  best  young  farmers  are  passing  over  our 
northwestern  boundary  to  Canada  to  escape  the  conditions. 
If  they  have  the  choice  between  cheap  land  and  loyalty  to 
their  country,  they  choose  the  cheap  land.  Already  the  cur- 
rent of  immigration,  which  no  longer  finds  a  ready  outlet  to 
the  land,  is  choking  our  great  cities.  Already  the  industrial 
laboring  class  is  gasping  under  an  increased  pressure  because 
the  automatic  outlet  of  the  workers  to  the  land  is  being 
stopped.  Yet  we  are  only  at  the  beginning  of  things.  The 
situation  clamors  for  sufficient  moral  foresight  to  avoid  the 
fate  of  Italy,  Spain,  or  Ireland.  The  farmers  ever  cling  with 
the  grip  of  desperation  to  the  land,  like  an  unweaned  child 
to  its  mother's  breast.  But  when  they  have  once  been  forced 
from  it  into  the  city,  it  is  exceedingly  hard  to  plant  them  on 
the  soil  once  more.  An  agricultural  population  is  hard  to 
recreate.  Yet  without  a  sound  agricultural  population  a 
nation  declines  in  economic  ability  and  in  moral  resourceful- 
ness. 

Q 


226  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

In  the  matter  of  ordinary  agricultural  land  the  monopo- 
listic element  inhering  in  private  ownership  has  not  yet  made 
itself  felt.  But  throughout  our  country  those  locations  which 
give  the  access  to  special  opportunities  are  rapidly  being 
absorbed.  The  most  beautiful  locations  along  our  seashore 
and  on  our  lakes  and  rivers  are  bought  up,  and  the  people 
are  fenced  out  from  natural  beauty  and  pleasure.  The  water 
rights  on  which  great  cities  depend  for  life  have  to  be  jealously 
guarded  against  hands  itching  to  get  at  them.  The  franchises 
by  which  the  transportation  of  men,  of  freight,  of  gas,  of 
electricity,  is  made  possible,  all  rest  on  the  grant  of  excep- 
tional land  rights.  The  anthracite  mines  are  a  striking 
demonstration  of  the  effect  of  giving  public  rights  into  the 
absolute  ownership  of  individuals  or  corporations.  The  coal 
stored  in  the  cellar  of  our  great  American  tenement  was  in- 
tended by  its  builder  for  the  use  of  all.  A  few  vigorous  boys 
have  secured  the  key  to  the  cellar  on  the  understanding  that 
they  would  fetch  the  coal  up  for  the  rest.  But  they  now 
claim  that  the  entire  supply  is  their  own,  and  charge  the 
tenants  not  only  for  the  service  of  hoisting  it  up,  but  for  the 
coal  itself.  They  are  using  the  key  not  only  to  get  coal  out, 
but  to  keep  it  in. 

The  most  glaring  evils  of  our  land  system  are  found  in  our 
cities.  City  land  represents  an  opportunity  to  live  and  to 
make  a  living.  Its  value  is  created  by  the  community  that 
throngs  over  and  around  it.  The  more  wealthy  and  moral 
the  neighborhood,  the  more  valuable  the  land.  The  value 
of  an  empty  city  lot  is  wholly  a  social  product ;  the  value  of 
an  improved  lot  is  partly  a  social  and  partly  a  personal  prod- 
uct. Moreover,  additional  value  is  created  by  the  pressure 
of  want.    The  more  numerous  the  people,  the  greater  the 


THE    PRESENT   CRISIS  227 

need  of  a  place  on  which  to  live  and  breathe.  Space  is  as 
much  a  necessity  of  life  as  air  and  water.  People  may  perish 
for  the  lack  of  it.  Hence  they  will  pay  heavily  for  the  use 
of  it.  Thus  the  community,  both  by  its  labors  and  by  its 
needs,  creates  an  increasing  value  for  city  land.  But  our 
laws  give  this  social  product  away  to  individuals.  This  en- 
courages speculation  in  land.  Men  buy  up  land  with  the 
hope  that  its  value  will  increase  without  their  labor.  If  their 
forecast  proves  false,  they  suffer  impoverishment  or  bank- 
ruptcy. If  it  proves  correct,  they  have  an  unearned  gain, 
like  a  shrewd  card-player.  In  either  case  the  process  is 
demoralizing  for  the  speculator. 

It  is  far  worse  for  the  people.  The  naturally  high  price 
of  city  land  is  further  enhanced  by  the  artificial  pressure  of 
speculation.  Around  all  our  cities  lies  a  ring  of  unused  land 
held  with  the  hope  of  a  rise.  The  growing  population  either 
has  to  pay  the  price  demanded,  or  crowd  closer  inside  of  the 
ring,  or  use  its  money  and  its  precious  time  in  travelling  daily 
beyond  the  ring.  If  the  city  enjoys  a  rapid  growth,  rents  and 
land  prices  rise,  the  landowners  absorb  a  large  part  of  the 
increase  in  wealth,  and  the  boom  is  choked.  The  crowding 
of  the  cities  increases  the  expenses  for  fire  protection,  police, 
and  sanitation.  It  is  responsible  for  many  of  the  most 
deadly  diseases,  especially  tuberculosis.  It  is  also  responsible 
for  the  moral  deterioration  accompanying  the  tenement  house 
and  the  street  life  of  the  cities.  The  ramifications  of  these 
demoralizing  effects  are  almost  endless. 

A  boy  dug  a  lot  of  angleworms  and  kept  them  in  a  small 
amount  of  earth  in  a  tin  can.  After  some  days  he  returned 
to  the  neglected  worms  and  found  that  most  of  them  had 
died  in  their  crowding,  a  few  still  lived  limp  and  discolored, 


228  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

and  maggots  infested  the  rotting  mass.  Here  were  organisms 
taken  out  of  their  natural  surroundings,  in  which  they  would 
have  maintained  their  cleanliness  and  health,  and  crowded  to 
their  death.     The  parable  is  plain. 

The  values  thus  created  by  society  and  absorbed  by  indi- 
viduals are  enormous.  An  eminent  and  very  conservative 
economist  ^  estimates  that  the  unearned  increment  in  Berlin 
during  the  last  fifty  years  certainly  amounted  to  $500,000,000 
or  $750,000,000.  Rental  values  in  London  increased  in  187 1- 
1891  from  24,000,000  pounds  to  almost  40,000,000,  and  about 
7,150,000  pounds  of  this  was  unearned  increase.  The  total 
of  this  for  twenty  years  would  be  equal  to  the  entire  esti- 
mated wealth  of  Germany.  Owing  to  the  immense  growth 
of  our  country,  and  the  still  more  immense  growth  of  our 
cities,  this  process  has  gone  on  faster  in  the  United  States 
than  anywhere  else.  Successful  land  speculation  has  formed 
the  nucleus  of  very  many  of  our  large  fortunes.  Our  cities 
are  poor,  unclean,  always  pressing  against  the  limits  of  in- 
debtedness, and  laying  heavy  burdens  of  taxation  on  the 
producing  classes.  At  the  same  time  these  enormous  values 
pass  to  individuals  who  have  only  contributed  a  fractional 
part  to  their  creation. 

There  is  a  deep-rooted  injustice  here  which  must  impress 
any  one  who  reflects  upon  it  and  whose  judgment  is  not 
clouded  by  profit  derived  from  the  system.  This  does  not, 
however,  imply  that  those  who  profit  by  it  are  morally  guilty. 
They  may  or  may  not  be.  Few  as  yet  recognize  any  wrong 
in  it.  Law  and  custom  sanction  it.  Even  those  who  see 
the  wrong  are  scarcely  able  to  withdraw  from  it.  They,  too, 
need  land  to  accomplish  anything  and  must  hold  it  in  the 

'  Schmoller,  "Grundriss  der  allgemeinen  Volkswirtschaftslehre,"  II,  450. 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  229 

established  ways.  But  poison  is  poison,  even  if  it  is  sup- 
posed to  be  a  necessary  food  or  drink.  Slavery  once  had  the 
sanction  of  human  and  divine  law.  It  may  be  that  the  day 
will  come  when  any  one  claiming  exclusive  property  right  in 
land  will  be  asked,  like  the  slaveholder  in  Vermont,  to  "  show 
a  bill  of  sale  signed  by  the  Almighty." 

The  moral  problem  to  be  solved  by  us  is  how  to  safeguard 
the  rights  of  the  individual  holder  of  the  land  who  has  in- 
creased its  value  by  his  labor  and  intelligence,  and  yet  to 
extract  for  the  community  the  value  which  the  community 
creates.  The  latter  right  is  now  obscured  and  disregarded, 
and  many  of  the  most  destructive  and  menacing  evils  of  our 
civilization  are  directly  or  indirectly  traceable  to  this  legalized 
method  of  disinheriting  the  community.^ 

From  an  economic  point  of  view  all  human  history  has 
turned  on  the  possession  of  the  land  and  its  privileges.  The  v 
conflicts  of  nation  with  nation  have  been  like  contests  of  herds 
for  grazing  ground.  The  conflicts  of  class  with  class  have 
been  struggles  for  equal  rights  on  the  grazing  ground.  While 
agriculture  was  the  chief  source  of  wealth,  the  burning  social 
question  was  how  to  counteract  the  tendency  toward  the  ag- 
gregation of  land  in  a  few  hands.  The  intense  social  struggles 
of  the  Greek  republics  turned  largely  on  the  redistribution  of 
the  communal  land.  Where  approximate  equality  was  main- 
tained, political  liberty  and  efficiency  continued.  The  con- 
trary meant  a  decay  of  liberty  and  intelligence  in  the  mass 
of  the  people,  and  finally  death.  Political  power  was  always 
desired  and  used  to  secure  special  control  over  the  natural 

'  The  brilliant  books  of  Henry  George,  "  Progress  and  Poverty  "  and      y 
"Social  Problems,"  are  still  worth  reading.     In  his  main  contentions  he  has 
never  been  answered. 


230  CHRISTIAlsnTY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

resources.  Land  robbery  on  a  large  scale  has  been  the  sin 
^  of  the  mighty.  In  1904  the  Czar  gave  command  to  add  cer- 
tain state  forests  to  his  private  possessions.  They  were 
valued  at  a  hundred  million  rubles.  He  paid  three  hundred 
thousand.^  The  church  and  monastery  lands  which  were 
"secularized"  during  the  Reformation  were  the  property  of 
the  people,  held  in  trust  by  the  Church.  If  they  had  been 
devoted  to  other  public  service,  they  might  have  endowed  a 
wonderful  system  of  education  or  freed  Germany  and  England 
forever  from  the  need  of  paying  taxes.  Instead  they  were 
seized  by  the  possessing  classes.  In  Germany  they  strength- 
ened despotic  power.  In  England  they  laid  the  foundation 
for  the  wealth  of  the  great  aristocratic  families  to  this  day. 
No  nation  can  allow  its  natural  sources  of  wealth  to  be  owned 
by  a  limited  and  diminishing  class  without  suffering  politi- 
cal enslavement  and  poverty.  Our  system  tends  that  way. 
"The  abolition  of  private  property  in  land  in  the  interest 
of  society  is  a  necessity."  ^ 

Work  and  In  the  agricultural  stage  of  society  the  chief  fneans  of  en- 
wages,  richment  was  to  gain  control  of  large  landed  wealth;  the 
chief  danger  to  the  people  lay  in  losing  control  of  the  great 
agricultural  means  of  production,  the  land.  Since  the  in- 
dustrial revolution  the  man-made  machinery  of  production 
has  assumed  an  importance  formerly  unknown.  The  fac- 
tories, the  machines,  the  means  of  transportation,  the  money 
to  finance  great  undertakings,  are  fully  as  important  in  the 
modern  process  of  production  as  the  land  from  which  the 

»      *  The  Outlook,  March  19,  1904,  p.  692. 

^  Rodbertus  and  Adolf  Wagner  in  their  edition  of  "  Rau's  Lehrbuch  der 
Nationalokonomie ." 


THE  PRESENT    CRISIS  23I 

raw  material  is  drawii.     Consequently  the  chief  way  to  en- 
richment in  an  industrial  community  will  be  the  control  of 
these  factors  of  production;    the  chief  danger  to  the  people     ^ 
will  be  to  lose  control  of  the  instnunents  of  industry. 

That  danger,  as  we  saw  in  our  brief  sketch  of  the  industrial 
revolution,  was  immediately  reahzed  in  the  most  sweeping 
measure.  The  people  lost  control  of  the  tools  of  industry 
more  completely  than  they  ever  lost  control  of  the  land. 
Under  the  old  system  the  workman  owned  the  simple  tools 
of  his  trade.  To-day  the  working  people  have  no  part  nor 
lot  in  the  machines  with  which  they  work.  In  capitahstic 
production  there  is  a  cooperation  between  two  distinct  groups : 
a  small  group  which  o\\tis  all  the  material  factors  of  land  and 
machinery;  a  large  group  which  owns  nothing  but  the  per- 
sonal factor  of  human  labor  power.  In  this  process  of  co- 
operation the  propertyless  group  is  at  a  fearful  disadvantage. 

No  attempt  is  made  to  allot  to  each  workman  his  share  in 
the  profits  of  the  joint  work.  Instead  he  is  paid  a  fixed  wage. 
The  upward  movement  of  this  wage  is  limited  by  the  pro- 
ductiveness of  his  work;  the  downward  movement  of  it  is 
limited  only  by  the  willingness  of  the  workman  to  work  at 
so  low  a  return.  His  willingness  will  be  determined  by  his 
needs.  If  he  is  poor  or  if  he  has  a  large  family,  he  can  be 
induced  to  take  less.  If  he  is  devoted  to  his  family,  and  if 
they  are  sick,  he  may  take  still  less.  The  less  he  needs,  the 
more  he  can  get;  the  more  he  needs,  the  less  he  will  get. 
This  is  the  exact  opposite  of  the  principle  that  prevails  in 
family  life,  where  the  child  that  needs  most  care  gets  most. 
In  our  family  life  we  have  solidarity  and  happiness;  in  our 
business  life  we  have  individualism  and  —  well,  not  exactly  ' 
happiness. 


232  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  statistics  of  wages  come  with  a  shock  to  any  one  read- 
ing them  with  an  active  imagination.  In  my  city  of  Roches- 
ter the  average  wage  for  males  over  sixteen  reported  by  the 
United  States  Census  of  1900  was  $480.50  a  year  and  for 
females  $267.10.  I  do  not  know  how  accurate  that  was.  It 
hardly  matters.  Fifty  dollars  one  way  or  the  other  would 
mean  a  great  deal  to  the  families  affected,  but  it  would  not 
change  the  total  impression  of  pitiable  inadequacy. 

But  the  real  wages  are  not  measured  by  dollars  and  cents, 
but  by  the  purchasing  power  of  the  money.  That  the  neces- 
saries of  life  have  risen  in  price  in  recent  years  is  familiar 
enough  to  every  housekeeper.  Wages,  too,  have  risen  in  some 
trades.  Very  earnest  efforts  have  been  made  by  experts  to 
prove  that  the  rise  in  wages  has  kept  pace  with  the  rise  in 
prices,  but  with  dubious  results.  Dun's  Review  some  time 
ago  compared  the  prices  of  350  staple  commodities  in  July  i, 
1897,  and  December  i,  1901,  and  found  that  $1013  in  1901 
would  buy  no  more  than  $724  in  1897.  Hence  if  wages  had 
remained  apparently  stationary,  they  had  actually  declined. 

The  purchasing  power  of  the  wages  determines  the  health 
and  comfort  of  the  workingman  and  his  family.  It  does 
not  decide  on  the  justice  of  his  wage.  That  is  determined 
by  comparing  the  total  product  of  his  work  with  the  share 
paid  to  him.  The  effectiveness  of  labor  has  increased  im- 
mensely since  the  advent  of  the  machine.  The  wealth  of 
the  industrial  nations  consequently  has  grown  in  a  degree 
unparalleled  in  history.  The  laborer  has  doubtless  profited 
by  this  in  common  with  all  others.  He  enjo3''s  luxuries  that 
were  beyond  the  reach  of  the  richest  in  former  times.  But  the 
justice  of  our  system  will  be  proved  only  if  we  can  show  that 
the  wealth,  comfort,  and  security  of  the  average  workingman 


THE    PRESENT   CRISIS  233 

in  1906  is  as  much  greater  than  that  of  the  average  working- 
man  in  1760  as  the  wealth  of  civilized  humanity  is  now 
greater  than  it  was  in  1760.  No  one  will  be  bold  enough 
to  assert  it.  The  bulk  of  the  increase  in  wealth  has  gone  to 
a  limited  class  who  in  various  ways  have  been  strong  enough 
to  take  it.  Wages  have  advanced  on  foot ;  profits  have  taken 
the  Limited  Express.  For  instance,  the  report  of  the  Inter- 
state Commerce  Commission  of  June,  1902,  stated  that  from 
1896-1902  the  average  wages  and  salaries  of  the  railway  em- 
ployees of  our  country,  1,200,000  men,  had  increased  from 
$550  to  $580,  or  five  per  cent.  During  the  same  period  the  net 
earnings  of  the  owners  had  increased  from  $377,000,000  to 
$610,000,000,  or  sixty- two  per  cent.  Thorold  Rogers,  in  his 
great  work  "Six  Centuries  of  Work  and  Wages,"  says:  "It 
may  well  be  the  case,  and  there  is  every  reason  to  fear  it  is  the 
case,  that  there  is  collected  a  population  in  our  great  towns 
which  equals  in  amount  the  whole  of  those  who  lived  in  Eng- 
land and  Wales  six  centuries  ago ;  but  whose  condition  is  more 
destitute,  whose  homes  are  more  squalid,  whose  means  are 
more  uncertain,  whose  prospects  are  more  hopeless,  than  those 
of  the  peasant  serfs  of  the  Middle  Ages  or  the  meanest  drudges 
of  the  mediaeval  cities."  If  the  celebrated  saying  of  John 
Stuart  Mill  is  true,  that  "it  is  questionable  if  all  the  mechanical 
inventions  yet  made  have  lightened  the  day's  toil  of  any  human 
being,"  it  means  that  the  achievements  of  the  human  mind 
have  been  thwarted  by  human  injustice.  Our  blessings  have 
failed  to  bless  us  because  they  were  not  based  on  justice  and 
soHdarity. 

The  existence  of  a  large  class  of  population  without  property 
rights  in  the  material  they  work  upon  and  the  tools  they 


234  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  morale  work  with,  and  without  claim  to  the  profits  resulting  from 
of  the  their  work,  must  have  subtle  and  far-reaching  effects  on  the 

workers. 

character  of  this  class  and  on  the  moral  tone  of  the  people  at 
large.^ 

A  man's  work  is  not  only  the  price  he  pays  for  the  right 
to  fill  his  stomach.  In  his  work  he  expresses  himself.  It 
is  the  output  of  his  creative  energy  and  his  main  contribu- 
tion to  the  common  life  of  mankind.  The  pride  which 
an  artist  or  professional  man  takes  in  his  work,  the  pleas- 
ure which  a  housewife  takes  in  adorning  her  home,  afford 
a  satisfaction  that  ranks  next  to  human  love  in  delightsome- 
ness. 

One  of  the  gravest  accusations  against  our  industrial 
system  is  that  it  does  not  produce  in  the  common  man  the 
pride  and  joy  of  good  work.  In  many  cases  the  surround- 
ings are  ugly,  depressing,  and  coarsening.  Much  of  the  stuff 
manufactured  is  dishonest  in  quality,  made  to  sell  and  not 
to  serve,  and  the  making  of  such  cotton  or  wooden  lies  must 
react  on  the  morals  of  every  man  that  handles  them.  There 
is  little  opportunity  for  a  man  to  put  his  personal  stamp  on 
his  work.  The  mediaeval  craftsman  could  rise  to  be  an 
artist  by  working  well  at  his  craft.  The  modern  factory 
hand  is  not  likely  to  develop  artistic  gifts  as  he  tends  his 
machine. 

It  is  a  common  and  true  complaint  of  employers  that  their 
men  take  no  interest  in  their  work.  But  why  should  they? 
What  motive  have  they  for  putting  love  and  care  into  their 
work?  It  is  not  theirs.  Christ  spoke  of  the  difference  be- 
tween the  hireling  shepherd  who  flees  and  the  owner  who 

^  See  the  admirable  book  by  John  Graham  Brooks,  "The  Social 
Unrest." 


THE    PRESENT    CRISIS  235 

loves  the  sheep.  Our  system  has  made  the  immense  majority 
of  industrial  workers  mere  hirelings.  If  they  do  conscientious 
work  nevertheless,  it  is  a  splendid  tribute  to  human  rectitude. 
Slavery  was  cheap  labor ;  it  was  also  dear  labor.  In  ancient 
Rome  the  slaves  on  the  country  estates  were  so  wasteful  that 
only  the  strongest  and  crudest  tools  could  be  given  them. 
The  more  the  wage  worker  approaches  their  condition,  the 
more  will  the  employer  confront  the  same  problem.  The 
finest  work  is  done  only  by  free  minds  who  put  love  into  their 
work  because  it  is  their  own.  When  a  workman  becomes  a 
partner,  he  "hustles"  in  a  new  spirit.  Even  the  small  bonus 
distributed  in  profit-sharing  experiments  has  been  found  to 
increase  the  carefulness  and  willingness  of  the  men  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  bonus  did  not  diminish  the  profits  of  the 
employers.  The  lowest  motives  for  work  are  the  desire  for 
wages  and  the  fear  of  losing  them.  Yet  these  are  almost 
the  only  motives  to  which  our  system  appeals.  It  does  not 
even  hold  out  the  hope  of  promotion,  unless  a  man  unites 
managing  ability  to  his  workmanship.  The  economic  loss  to 
the  community  by  this  paralysis  of  the  finer  springs  of  human 
action  is  beyond  computation.  But  the  moral  loss  is  vastly 
more  threatening. 

The  fear  of  losing  his  job  is  the  workman's  chief  incentive 
to  work.  Our  entire  industrial  life,  for  employer  and  em- 
ployee, is  a  reign  of  fear.  The  average  workingman's  family 
is  only  a  few  weeks  removed  from  destitution.  The  dread  of 
want  is  always  over  them,  and  that  is  worse  than  brief  times 
of  actual  want.  It  is  often  said  in  defence  of  the  wages 
system  that  while  the  workman  does  not  share  in  the  hope 
of  profit,  neither  is  he  troubled  by  the  danger  of  loss;  he 
gets  his  wage  even  if  the  shop  is  running  at  a  loss.     Not  for 


236  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

any  length  of  time.  His  form  of  risk  is  the  danger  of  being 
out  of  work  when  work  grows  slack,  and  when  his  job  is 
gone,  all  his  resources  are  gone,.  In  times  of  depression  the 
misery  and  anxiety  among  the  working  people  are  appalling ; 
yet  periodical  crises  hitherto  have  been  an  unavoidable  ac- 
companiment of  our  speculative  industry.  The  introduction 
of  new  machinery,  the  reorganization  of  an  industry  by  a 
trust,  the  speeding  of  machinery  which  makes  fewer  men 
necessary,  the  competition  of  cheap  immigrant  labor,  all 
combine  to  make  the  hold  of  the  working  classes  on  the 
means  of  life  insecure.  That  workingmen  ever  dare  to  strike 
work  is  remarkable  testimony  to  the  economic  pressure  that 
impels  them  and  to  the  capacity  of  sacrifice  for  common  ends 
among  them. 

While  a  workman  is  in  his  prime,  he  is  always  in  danger  of 
losing  his  job.  When  he  gets  older,  he  is  almost  certain  to 
lose  it.  The  pace  is  so  rapid  that  only  supple  Hmbs  can  keep 
up.  Once  out  of  a  job,  it  is  hard  for  an  elderly  man  to  get 
another.  Men  shave  clean  to  conceal  gray  hairs.  They  are  no 
longer  a  crown  of  honor,  but  an  industrial  handicap.  A  man 
may  have  put  years  of  his  life  into  a  business,  but  he  has  no 
claim  on  it  at  the  end,  except  the  feeble  claim  of  sympathetic 
pity.  President  EHot  thinks  that  he  has  a  just  but  un- 
recognized claim  because  he  has  helped  to  build  up  the  good- 
will of  the  business.  There  is  a  stronger  claim  in  the  fact 
that  the  result  of  his  work  has  never  been  paid  to  him  in  full. 
If,  for  instance,  a  man  has  produced  a  net  value  of  $800 
a  year  and  has  received  $500  a  year,  $300  annually  stand 
to  his  credit  in  the  sight  of  God.  These  dividends  with 
compound  interest  would  amount  to  a  tidy  sum  at  the  end  of 
a  term  of  years  and  ought  to  suffice  to  employ  him  at  his  old 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  237 

wages  even  if  his  productive  capacity  declines.*  But  at 
present,  unless  his  employer  is  able  and  willing  to  show  him 
charity,  or  unless  by  unusual  thrift  he  has  managed  to  save 
something,  he  becomes  dependent  on  the  faithfulness  of  his 
children  or  the  charity  of  the  public.  In  England  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  aged  working  people  finally  "go  on 
the  parish."  In  Germany  they  have  a  socialist  system  of 
insurance  for  old  age.  The  fact  that  so  few  Germans  have 
emigrated  in  recent  years  is  probably  due  in  part  to  the  hope 
held  out  by  this  slight  capitalization  of  their  life's  labor.  We 
are  not  even  thinking  of  such  an  institution  in  America.  Fear 
and  insecurity  weigh  upon  our  people  increasingly,  and  break 
down  their  nerves,  their  mental  buoyancy,  and  their  character. 
This  constant  insecurity  and  fear  pervading  the  entire 
condition  of  the  working  people  is  like  a  corrosive  chemical 
that  disintegrates  their  self-respect.  For  an  old  man  to  be 
able  to  look  about  him  on  the  farm  or  business  he  has  built 
up  by  the  toil  of  his  life,  is  a  profound  satisfaction,  an  antidote 
to  the  sense  of  declining  strength  and  gradual  failure.  For 
an  old  man  after  a  lifetime  of  honest  work  to  have  nothing, 
to  amount  to  nothing,  to  be  turned  off  as  useless,  and  to  eat 
the  bread  of  dependence,  is  a  pitiable  humiliation.  I  can 
conceive  of  nothing  so  crushing  to  all  proper  pride  as  for  a 
workingman  to  be  out  of  work  for  weeks,  offering  his  work 
and  his  body  and  soul  at  one  place  after  the  other,  and  to  be 
told  again  and  again  that  nobody  has  any  use  for  such  a 
man  as  he.     It  is  no  wonder  that  men  take  to  drink  when 

*  This  proportion  of  wages  paid  and  wages  retained  is  simply  assumed 
for  the  sake  of  concreteness  in  the  argument.  The  actual  proportion,  of 
course,  will  vary  with  the  "profits"  of  a  concern.  The  census  of  1900  esti- 
mated the  average  per  capita  production  at  $12-14  a  day,  and  the  average 
wage  at  $1.38. 


238  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE   SOCIAL    CRISIS 

they  are  out  of  work ;  for  drink,  at  least  for  a  while,  creates 
illusions  of  contentment  and  worth.  The  Recessional  of 
Alcohol  has  the  refrain,  "Let  us  forget."  Every  great  strike, 
every  industrial  crisis,  pushes  some  men  over  the  line  of  self- 
respect  into  petty  thievery  and  vagrancy,  and  over  the  gate 
to  the  long  road  of  hoboism  is  written,  "Leave  all  hope  be- 
hind, all  ye  that  enter  here."  To  accept  charity  is  at  first 
one  of  the  most  bitter  experiences  of  the  self-respecting 
workingman.  Some  abandon  their  families,  go  insane  or 
commit  suicide  rather  than  surrender  the  virginity  of  their 
independence.  But  when  they  have  once  learned  to  depend 
on  gifts,  the  parasitic  habit  of  mind  grows  on  them,  and  it 
becomes  hard  to  wake  them  back  to  self-support.  They  have 
eaten  the  food  of  the  lotos-eaters  and  henceforth  "surely, 
surely  slumber  is  more  sweet  than  toil."  It  would  be  a  theme 
for  the  psychological  analysis  of  a  great  novelist  to  describe 
the  slow  degradation  of  the  soul  when  a  poor  man  becomes  a 
pauper.  During  the  great  industrial  crisis  in  the  90's  I  saw 
good  men  go  into  disreputable  lines  of  employment  and  re- 
spectable widows  consent  to  live  with  men  who  would  sup- 
port them  and  their  children.  One  could  hear  human  virtue 
cracking  and  crumbling  all  around.  Whenever  work  is 
scarce,  petty  crime  is  plentiful.  But  that  is  only  the  tangible 
expression  of  the  decay  in  the  morale  of  the  working  people 
on  which  statistics  can  seize.  The  corresponding  decay  in 
the  morality  of  the  possessing  classes  at  such  a  time  is  an- 
other story.  But  industrial  crises  are  not  inevitable  in  nature ; 
they  are  merely  inevitable  in  capitalism. 

A  similar  corrosive  influence  is  the  hatred  generated  by 
our  system.  The  employees  are  often  hot  with  smouldering 
resentment  at  their  treatment  by  the   employers,  and   the 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  239 

employers  are  at  least  warm  with  annoyance  at  the  organi- 
zations of  the  men,  and  full  of  distrust  for  the  honesty  and 
willingness  of  their  helpers.  The  economic  loss  to  both  sides 
in  every  strike  is  great  enough,  but  the  loss  in  human  fellow- 
ship and  kindliness  is  of  far  greater  moment.  It  would  be 
far  better  for  a  community  to  lose  a  million  dollars  by  fire 
than  to  lose  it  by  a  strike  or  lockout.  The  acts  of  violence 
committed  on  both  sides,  by  legalized  means  on  the  one,  by 
spontaneous  brutality  on  the  other,  are  only  the  efflorescence 
of  the  inflamed  feeling  created.  And  the  acute  inflammation 
tends  to  become  chronic.  Every  animal  will  fight  other  ani- 
mals that  trench  on  its  feeding  grounds.  Every  social  class 
in  history  has  used  whatever  weapons  it  had  —  sword,  law, 
ostracism,  or  clerical  anathema  —  to  strike  at  any  other  class 
that  endangered  its  income.  Railways  use  lobbies;  their 
employees  use  clubs;  each  uses  the  weapon  that  is  handy 
and  effective.  But  it  is  all  brutalizing  and  destructive. 
Strikes  are  mild  civil  war,  and  "war  is  hell."  If  our  in- 
dustrial organization  cannot  evolve  some  saner  method  of 
reconciling  conflicting  interests  than  twenty-four  thousand 
strikes  and  lockouts  in  twenty  years,  it  will  be  a  confession 
of  social  impotence  and  moral  bankruptcy.* 

It  used  to  be  a  fine  thing  to  mark  how  the  richer  food  and  The  physi- 

Cfil  decline 

freer  life  in  our  country  increased  the  stature  and  beauty  of  of  the 
the  immigrant  families.     America  meant  a  rise  in  the  standard  People, 
of  living,  and  hence  an  increase  in  physical  efficiency.     The 

*  Professor  N.  P.  Oilman,  "Methods  of  Industrial  Peace,"  computes  the 
number  of  strikes,  1881-1900,  at  22,793,  ^^'^  ^^^  lockouts  at  1005.  The 
total  number  thrown  out  of  work  was  6,610,000.  The  loss  to  the  men  was 
$306,683,233;  to  the  employers,  $142,659,104. 


240  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

rapid  progress  of  our  country  has  been  due  to  the  wealth  of 
natural  resources  on  the  one  side  and  the  physical  vigor  and 
mental  buoyancy  of  the  human  resources  on  the  other  side. 

To-day  there  are  large  portions  of  the  wage-earning  popu- 
lation of  which  that  is  no  longer  true.  They  are  not  advanc- 
ing, but  receding  in  stamina,  and  bequeathing  an  enfeebled 
equipment  to  the  next  generation.^ 

The  human  animal  needs  space,  air,  and  light,  just  like  any 
other  highly  developed  organism.  But  the  competitive  neces- 
sities of  industry  crowd  the  people  together  in  the  cities. 
Land  speculation  and  high  car-fares  hem  them  in  even  where 
the  location  of  our  cities  permits  easy  expansion.  High  rents 
mean  small  rooms.  Dear  coal  means  lack  of  ventilation  in 
winter.  Coal-smoke  means  susceptibility  to  all  throat  and 
lung  diseases.  The  tenement  districts  of  our  great  cities  are 
miasmatic  swamps  of  bad  air,  and  just  as  swamps  teem  with 
fungous  growths,  so  the  bacilli  of  tuberculosis  multiply  on 
the  rotting  lungs  of  the  underfed  and  densely  housed  multi- 
tudes. The  decline  in  the  death-rate  with  the  advance  in 
sanitary  science,  the  sudden  drop  of  the  rate  after  the  destruc- 
tion and  rebuilding  of  slum  districts  in  English  cities,^  prove 
clearly  how  preventible  a  great  proportion  of  deaths  are. 
The  preventible  decimation  of  the  people  is  social  murder. 

The  human  animal  needs  good  food  to  be  healthy,  just 
like  a  horse  or  cow.  The  artificial  rise  in  food  prices  is  at 
the  expense  of  the  vital  force  of  the  American  people.  The 
larger  our  cities,  the  wider  are  the  areas  from  which  their 
perishable  food  is  drawn  and  the  staler  and  less  nourishing 

*  On  this  entire  section  see  Robert  Hunter,  "Poverty." 
'  The  reduction  in  some  cases  has  been  from  fifty-five  to  fourteen  per 
thousand. 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  24I 

will  be  the  food.  Canned  goods  are  a  sorry  substitute  for 
fresh  food.  The  ideal  housewife  can  make  a  palatable  and 
nourishing  meal  from  almost  anything.  But  the  wives  of  the 
workingmen  have  been  working  girls,  and  they  rarely  have 
a  chance  to  learn  good  housekeeping  before  they  marry. 
Scorching  a  steak  diminishes  its  nutritive  value  and  the 
appetite  of  the  eater,  and  both  are  essential  for  nutrition. 

Poor  food  and  cramped  rooms  lower  the  vitality  of  the 
people.  At  the  same  time  the  output  of  vitality  demanded 
from  them  grows  ever  greater.  Life  in  a  city,  with  the  sights 
and  sounds,  the  hurry  for  trains,  the  contagious  rush,  is 
itself  a  flaring  consumer  of  nervous  energy.  The  work  at 
the  machine  is  worse.  That  tireless  worker  of  steel,  driven 
by  the  stored  energy  of  the  sun  in  forgotten  ages,  sets  the 
pace  for  the  exhausted  human  organism  that  feeds  it.  The 
speeding  of  machines  is  greater  in  America  than  anywhere 
in  the  world.  Unless  the  food  and  housing  remain  propor- 
tionately better,  the  American  workman  is  drained  faster. 
Immigrants  who  try  to  continue  the  kind  of  food  that  kept 
them  in  vigor  at  home,  collapse  under  the  strain. 

Under  such  a  combination  of  causes  the  health  of  the  peo- 
ple inevitably  breaks  down.  Improved  medical  science  has 
counteracted  the  effects  to  a  large  extent,  but  in  spite  of  all 
modem  progress  the  physical  breakdown  is  apparent  in 
many  directions.  Diseases  of  the  nerves,  culminating  in 
prostration  and  insanity ;  diseases  of  the  heart  through  over- 
strain ;  diseases  of  the  digestion  through  poor  nutrition,  haste 
in  mastication,  and  anxiety ;  zymotic  diseases  due  to  crowd- 
ing and  dirt  —  all  these  things  multiply  and  laugh  at  our 
curative  efforts.  Tuberculosis,  which  might  be  eradicated  in 
ten  years  if  we  had  sense,  continues  to  cripple  our  children, 

R 


242  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

to  snuff  out  the  life  of  our  young  men  and  women  in  their 
prime,  and  to  leave  the  fatherless  and  motherless  to  struggle 
along  in  their  feebleness.  Alcoholism  is  both  a  cause  and  an 
effect  of  poverty.  The  poor  take  to  drink  because  they  are 
tired,  discouraged,  and  flabby  of  will,  and  without  more 
wholesome  recreation.  When  the  narcotic  has  once  gained 
control  over  them,  it  works  more  rapidly  with  them  than 
with  the  well  fed  who  work  in  the  open.  Tuberculosis  and 
alcoholism  are  social  diseases,  degenerating  the  stock  of  the 
people,  fostered  by  the  commercial  interests  of  landowners 
and  liquor  dealers,  thriving  on  the  weak  and  creating  the 
weak. 

This  condition  of  exhaustion  tends  to  perpetuate  itself. 
Children  are  begotten  in  a  state  of  physical  exhaustion. 
Underfed  and  overworked  women  in  tenement  and  factory 
are  nourishing  the  children  in  their  prenatal  life.  During 
the  years  when  a  workingman's  family  is  bringing  up  young 
children,  before  their  earnings  become  available,  the  family 
is  submerged  in  poverty  through  these  parental  burdens,  and 
neither  the  parents  nor  the  growing  children  are  likely  to  be 
well  fed  and  well  housed.  Very  early  in  life  the  children  are 
hitched  to  the  machine  for  life,  and  the  vitality  which  ought 
-  to  build  their  bodies  during  the  crucial  period  of  adolescence 
is  used  up  to  make  goods  a  little  cheaper,  or,  what  is  more 
likely,  merely  to  make  profits  a  little  larger.  Imagine  that 
any  breeder  of  live  stock  should  breed  horses  or  cows  under 
such  conditions,  what  would  be  the  result  in  a  few  genera- 
tions? Our  apple  orchards  are  planted  in  wide  squares,  so 
that  every  tree  has  the  soil,  the  air,  the  sunshine,  which  it 
needs.  If  we  planted  a  dense  jungle  of  trees,  we  should  have 
a  dwarfed  growth,  scraggy  and  thorny,  and  only  here  and 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  243 

there  a  crabbed  apple.  What  harvest  of  human  kind  will 
we  have  in  the  broad  field  of  our  republic  if  we  plant  men  in 
that  way? 

The  physical  drain  of  which  we  have  spoken  is  gradual  and 
slow,  and  therefore  escapes  observation  and  sympathy.  But 
it  is  the  lot  of  the  working  people  in  addition  to  this  to  suffer 
frequent  mangling  and  mutilation.  A  workman  who  tends 
one  of  our  great  machines  is  pitted  against  a  monster  of  blind 
and  crushing  strength  and  has  to  be  ever  alert,  like  one  who 
enters  a  cage  of  tigers.  Yet  human  nature  is  so  constituted 
that  it  grows  careless  of  danger  which  is  always  near,  and 
cheerfully  plucks  the  beard  of  death.  Unless  the  machines 
are  surrounded  with  proper  safeguards,  they  take  a  large  toll 
of  life  and  limb.  The  state  accident  insurance  system  in 
Germany  has  revealed  a  terrible  frequency  of  industrial  acci- 
dents. We  have  never  yet  dared  to  get  the  facts  for  our 
country,  except  in  mining  and  railroading ;  but  it  is  safe  to 
say  that  no  country  is  so  reckless  of  accidents  as  our  own. 
It  is  asserted  that  one  in  eight  of  our  people  dies  a  violent 
death.  The  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  in  October, 
1904,  stated  that  78,152  persons  had  been  killed  on  the  rail- 
roads in  the  previous  ten  years,  and  78,247  had  been  injured 
in  the  single  preceding  year.  Any  one  who  has  ever  been 
through  a  railway  accident  knows  what  a  horrible  total  of 
bloody  and  groaning  suffering  these  figures  imply.  Yet 
few  railways  voluntarily  introduced  automatic  car-couplers  to 
lessen  one  of  the  most  frequent  causes  of  accident.  They 
resisted  legislation  as  long  as  they  could;  introduced  the 
automatic  couplers  as  slowly  as  they  could;  and  are  now 
resisting  the  introduction  of  the  block  system  in  the  same 
way.    Yet  automatic  coupling  reduced  the  number  of  men 


244  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

killed  from  433  in  1893  to  167  in  1902,  and  the  number  in- 
jured from  11,277  to  2864,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  total 
number  of  employees  had  greatly  increased  during  these  ten 
years.  The  same  resistance  met  the  efforts  to  guard  the  lives 
of  sailors  by  the  PlimsoU  mark  and  indeed  almost  every 
effort  to  compel  owners  to  provide  safety  appliances,  or  to 
make  them  liable  for  accidents  to  their  servants.  It  is 
dividends  against  human  lives.  All  great  corporations  have 
agents  w^hose  sole  business  it  is  to  look  after  accidents  and 
see  that  the  company  suffers  as  little  loss  as  possible  through 
the  claims  of  the  injured.  Yet  many  are  injured  in  railway 
work  and  elsewhere  because  long  hours  in  the  service  of  those 
same  corporations  had  so  worn  them  down  that  their  mind 
was  numb  and  they  were  unable  to  look  out  for  themselves. 

I  venture  to  give  concreteness  to  these  matters  by  telling  a 
single  case  which  I  followed  from  beginning  to  end. 

An  elderly  workingman,  a  good  Christian  man,  was  run 
down  by  a  street  car  in  New  York  City.  His  leg  was  badly 
bruised.  He  was  taken  to  an  excellent  hospital  near  by. 
His  wife  and  daughter  visited  him  immediately.  After  that 
they  had  to  wait  to  the  regular  visiting  day.  On  that  day 
they  came  to  me  in  great  distress  and  said  that  he  had  been 
sent  forward  to  Bellevue  Hospital.  I  went  with  them  and 
we  found  that  he  had  been  there  only  one  night,  and  had 
again  been  sent  on  to  the  Charity  Hospital  on  BlackwelFs 
Island.  At  both  hospitals  they  said  the  case  was  not  serious 
and  they  had  shifted  him  to  make  room  for  graver  cases. 
The  steamer  connecting  Bellevue  and  the  Island  had  left  on 
its  last  trip  that  day.  If  the  two  women  had  been  alone,  they 
would  have  been  helpless  in  their  anxiety  till  the  next  day. 
I  got  them  across.     After  hours  of  fear,  which  almost  pros- 


THE  PRESENT   CRISIS  24$ 

trated  them,  we  found  the  old  man.  He  was  fairly  com- 
fortable and  reported  that  his  night  at  Bellevue  had  been 
spent  on  the  floor.  A  few  days  later  gangrene  set  in ;  the  leg 
was  twice  amputated,  and  he  died.  I  am  not  competent  to  say 
if  this  result  was  due  to  neglect  or  not.  I  know  of  other 
cases  in  which  that  first  hospital  shipped  charity  patients 
elsewhere  without  giving  any  notice  whatever  to  the  rela- 
tives. 

The  agent  of  the  street-car  company  promptly  called  on  the 
family  and  offered  Sioo  in  settlement  of  all  damages.  I  saw 
the  manager  on  their  behalf.  He  explained  courteously  that 
since  the  case  resulted  in  death,  $5000  would  be  the  maximum 
allowed  by  New  York  laws,  and  since  the  man's  earnings 
had  been  small  and  he  had  but  few  years  of  earning  capacity 
before  him,  the  amount  of  damage  allowed  by  the  courts  in 
his  case  would  be  slight.  The  suffering  to  the  affections  of 
the  family  did  not  enter  into  the  legal  aspect  of  the  matter. 
The  company  paid  its  counsel  by  the  year.  If  the  family 
sued  and  was  successful  in  the  lower  court,  the  manager 
frankly  said  they  would  carry  it  to  the  higher  courts  and  could 
wear  out  the  resources  of  the  family  at  slight  expense  to  the 
corporation.  The  president,  a  benevolent  and  venerable- 
looking  gentleman,  explained  to  me  that  the  combined  dis- 
tance travelled  by  their  cars  daily  would  reach  from  New 
York  to  the  Rocky  Mountains.  People  were  constantly 
being  run  over,  and  the  company  could  not  afford  to  be 
more  generous.  The  widow  concluded  to  submit  to  the 
terms  offered.  The  $100  was  brought  to  her  in  the  usual 
form  of  single  dollar  bills  to  make  it  look  like  vast  wealth 
to  a  poor  person.  The  daughter  suffered  very  serious  or- 
ganic injury  through  the  shock  received  when  her  father 


246  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

had  disappeared  from  the  hospital,  and  this  was  probably 
one  cause  for  her  death  in  child-birth  several  years  later. 

The  officers  of  the  hospitals  and  the  officers  of  the  street- 
railway  company  were  not  bad  men.  Their  point  of  view 
and  their  habits  of  mind  are  entirely  comprehensible.  I  feel 
no  certainty  that  I  should  not  act  in  the  same  way  if  I  had 
been  in  their  place  long  enough.  But  the  impression  re- 
mained that  our  social  machinery  is  almost  as  blindly  cruel 
as  its  steel  machinery,  and  that  it  runs  over  the  life  of  a 
poor  man  with  scarcely  a  quiver. 

There  is  certainly  a  great  and  increasing  body  of  chronic 
wretchedness  in  our  wonderful  country.  It  is  greatest  where 
our  industrial  system  has  worked  out  its  conclusions  most 
completely.  Our  national  optimism  and  conceit  ought  not 
to  blind  us  longer  to  the  fact.  Single  cases  of  unhappiness 
are  inevitable  in  our  frail  human  life ;  but  when  there  are 
millions  of  them,  all  running  along  well-defined  grooves, 
reducible  to  certain  laws,  then  this  misery  is  not  an  indi- 
vidual, but  a  social  matter,  due  to  causes  in  the  structure  of 
our  society  and  curable  only  by  social  reconstruction.  We 
point  with  pride  to  the  multitude  of  our  charitable  organi- 
zations. Our  great  cities  have  annual  directories  of  their 
charitable  organizations,  which  state  the  barest  abstract  of 
facts  and  yet  make  portly  volumes.  These  institutions  are 
the  pride  and  the  shame  of  Christian  civilization ;  the  pride 
because  we  so  respond  to  the  cry  of  suffering ;  the  shame,  be- 
cause so  much  need  exists.  They  are  a  heavy  financial  drag. 
The  more  humane  our  feeling  is,  the  better  we  shall  have  to 
house  our  dependents  and  delinquents.  But  those  who  have 
had  personal  contact  with  the  work,  feel  that  they  are  beating 
back  a  swelling  tide  with  feeble  hands.     With  their  best  in- 


THE   PRESENT  CRISIS  247 

tentions  they  may  be  harming  men  more  than  helping  them. 
And  the  misery  grows.  The  incapables  increase  faster  than 
the  population.  Moreover,  beyond  the  charity  cases  lies  the 
mass  of  wretchedness  that  spawns  them.  For  every  half- 
witted pauper  in  the  almshouse  there  may  be  ten  misbe- 
gotten and  muddle-headed  individuals  bungling  their  work 
and  their  life  outside.  For  every  person  who  is  oflScially 
declared  insane,  there  are  a  dozen  whose  nervous  organiza- 
tion is  impaired  and  who  are  centres  of  further  trouble.  For 
every  thief  in  prison  there  are  others  outside,  pilfering  and 
defrauding,  and  rendering  social  life  insecure  and  anxious. 
Mr.  Hunter  ^  estimates  that  about  four  million  persons  are 
dependent  on  public  relief  in  the  United  States ;  that  an  equal 
number  are  destitute,  but  bear  their  misery  in  silence ;  and 
that  ten  million  have  an  income  insufficient  to  maintain  them 
even  in  a  state  of  physical  efficiency  to  do  their  work.  The 
methods  by  which  he  arrives  at  these  results  seem  careful  and 
fair.  But  suppose  that  he  were  a  million  or  two  out  of  the 
way,  does  that  afiFect  the  moral  challenge  of  the  figures  much  ? 
Sir  Wilfred  Lawson  told  of  a  test  applied  by  the  head  of 
an  insane  asylum  to  distinguish  the  sane  from  the  insane. 
He  took  them  to  a  basin  of  water  under  a  running  faucet  and 
asked  them  to  dip  out  the  water.  The  insane  merely  dipped 
and  dipped.  The  sane  turned  off  the  faucet  and  dipped  out 
the  rest.    Is  our  social  order  sane  ? 

Approximate  equality  is  the  only  enduring  foundation  of  The 
political  democracy.     The  sense  of  equality  is  the  only  basis  inequality. 
for  Christian  morality.     Healthful  human  relations  seem  to 
run  only  on  horizontal  lines.     Consequently  true  love  always 

'  Robert  Hunter,  "  Poverty,"  Chap.  I. 


248  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

seeks  to  create  a  level.  If  a  rich  man  loves  a  poor  girl,  he 
lifts  her  to  financial  and  social  equality  with  himself.  If  his 
love  has  not  that  equalizing  power,  it  is  flawed  and  becomes 
prostitution.  Wherever  husbands  by  social  custom  regard 
their  wives  as  inferior,  there  is  a  deep-seated  defect  in  mar- 
ried life.  If  a  teacher  talks  down  at  his  pupils,  not  as  a 
maturer  friend,  but  with  an  "I  say  so,"  he  confines  their 
minds  in  a  spiritual  straight-jacket  instead  of  liberating  them. 
Equality  is  the  only  basis  for  true  educational  influences. 
Even  our  instinct  of  pity,  which  is  love  going  out  to  the 
weak,  works  with  spontaneous  strength  only  toward  those 
of  our  own  class  and  circle  who  have  dropped  into  misfor- 
tune. Business  men  feel  very  differently  toward  the  widow 
of  a  business  man  left  in  poverty  than  they  do  toward  a 
widow  of  the  poorer  classes.  People  of  a  lower  class  who 
demand  our  help  are  "cases";  people  of  our  own  class  are 
folks. 

The  demand  for  equality  is  often  ridiculed  as  if  it  implied 
that  all  men  were  to  be  of  identical  wealth,  wisdom,  and 
authority.  But  social  equahty  can  coexist  with  the  greatest 
natural  differences.  There  is  no  more  fundamental  differ- 
ence than  that  of  sex,  nor  a  greater  intellectual  chasm  than 
that  between  an  educated  man  and  his  little  child,  yet  in 
the  family  all  are  equal.  In  a  college  community  there  are 
various  gradations  of  rank  and  authority  within  the  faculty, 
and  there  is  a  clearly  marked  distinction  between  the  students 
and  the  faculty,  but  there  is  social  equality.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  janitor  and  the  peanut  vender  are  outside  of  the 
circle,  however  important  they  may  be  to  it. 

The  social  equality  existing  in  our  country  in  the  past  has 
been  one  of  the  chief  charms  of  life  here  and  of  far  more 


THE   PRESENT    CRISIS  249 

practical  importance  to  our  democracy  than  the  universal 
ballot.  After  a  long  period  of  study  abroad  in  my  youth  I 
realized  on  my  return  to  America  that  life  here  was  far  poorer 
in  music,  art,  and  many  forms  of  enjoyment  than  life  on  the 
continent  of  Europe ;  but  that  life  tasted  better  here,  never- 
theless, because  men  met  one  another  more  simply,  frankly, 
and  wholesomely.  In  Europe  a  man  is  always  considering 
just  how  much  deference  he  must  show  to  those  in  ranks 
above  him,  and  in  turn  noting  jealously  if  those  below  him 
are  strewing  the  right  quantity  of  incense  due  to  his  own 
social  position. 

That  fundamental  democracy  of  social  intercourse,  which 
is  one  of  the  richest  endowments  of  our  American  life,  is 
shpping  from  us.  Actual  inequality  endangers  the  sense  of 
equality.  The  rich  man  and  the  poor  man  can  meet  on  a 
level  if  they  are  old  friends,  or  if  they  are  men  of  exceptional 
moral  qualities,  or  if  they  meet  under  unusual  circumstances 
that  reduce  all  things  to  their  primitive  human  elements. 
But  as  a  general  thing  they  will  live  different  lives,  and  the 
sense  of  unlikeness  will  affect  all  their  dealings.  With  women 
the  spirit  of  social  caste  seems  to  be  even  more  fatally  easy 
than  with  men.  It  may  be  denied  that  the  poor  in  our  coun- 
try are  getting  poorer,  but  it  cannot  well  be  denied  that  the 
rich  are  getting  richer.  The  extremes  of  wealth  and  poverty 
are  much  farther  apart  than  formerly,  and  thus  the  poor  are 
at  least  relatively  poorer.  There  is  a  rich  class  and  a  poor 
class,  whose  manner  of  life  is  wedged  farther  and  farther 
apart,  and  whose  boundary  lines  are  becoming  ever  more 
distinct.  The  difference  in  housing,  eating,  dressing,  and 
speaking  would  be  a  sufficient  barrier.  The  dominant  posi- 
tion of  the  one  class  in  industry  and  the  dependence  of  the 


250  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

other  is  even  more  decisive.  The  owners  or  managers  of 
industry  are  rich  or  highly  paid ;  they  have  technical  knowl- 
edge, the  will  to  command,  the  habits  of  mind  bred  by  the 
exercise  of  authority;  they  say  "Go,"  and  men  go;  they  say 
"Do  this,"  and  an  army  of  men  obeys.  On  the  other  side 
is  the  mass  who  take  orders,  who  are  employed  or  dismissed 
at  a  word,  who  use  their  muscles  almost  automatically,  and 
who  have  no  voice  in  the  conduct  of  their  own  shop.  These 
are  two  distinct  classes,  and  no  rhetoric  can  make  them  equal. 
Moreover,  such  a  condition  is  inseparable  from  the  capitalis- 
tic organization  of  industry.  As  capitalism  grows,  it  must 
create  a  proletariat  to  correspond.  Just  as  militarism  is 
based  on  military  obedience,  so  capitalism  is  based  on 
economic  dependence. 

We  hear  passionate  protests  against  the  use  of  the  hateful 
word  "class"  in  America,  There  are  no  classes  in  our  coun- 
try, we  are  told.  But  the  hateful  part  is  not  the  word,  but 
the  thing.  If  class  distinctions  are  growing  up  here,  he 
serves  his  country  ill  who  would  hush  up  the  fact  or  blind 
the  people  to  it  by  fine  phrases.  A  class  is  a  body  of  men  who 
are  so  similar  in  their  work,  their  duties  and  privileges,  their 
manner  of  life  and  enjoyment,  that  a  common  interest,  com- 
mon conception  of  life,  and  common  moral  ideals  are  devel- 
oped and  cement  the  individuals.  The  business  men  consti- 
tute such  a  class.  The  industrial  workers  also  constitute  such 
a  class.  In  old  countries  the  upper  class  gradually  adorned 
itself  with  titles,  won  special  privileges  in  court  and  army 
and  law,  and  created  an  atmosphere  of  awe  and  apartness. 
But  the  solid  basis  on  which  this  was  done  was  the  feudal 
control  of  the  land,  which  was  then  the  great  source  of 
wealth.     The  rest  was  merely  the  decorative  moss  that  grows 


THE   PRESENT    CRISIS  2$! 

up  on  the  rocks  of  permanent  wealth.  With  the  industrial 
revolution  a  new  source  of  wealth  opened  up;  a  new  set  of 
men  gained  control  of  it  and  ousted  the  old  feudal  nobility 
more  or  less  thoroughly.  The  new  aristocracy,  which  is 
based  on  mobile  capital,  has  not  yet  had  time  to  festoon  itself 
with  decorations,  but  likes  to  hasten  the  process  by  inter- 
marriage with  the  remnants  of  the  old  feudal  nobility. 
Whether  it  will  ever  duplicate  the  old  forms  in  this  country 
is  immaterial,  as  long  as  it  has  the  fact  of  power.  In  some 
way  the  social  inequality  will  find  increasing  outward  ex- 
pression and  will  tend  to  make  itself  permanent.  Where 
there  are  actual  class  differences,  there  will  be  a  dawning 
class  consciousness,  a  clear  class  interest,  and  there  may  be 
a  class  struggle. 

In  the  past  the  sympathy  between  the  richer  and  the  poorer 
members  of  American  society  has  still  run  strong.  Many 
rich  men  and  women  were  once  poor  and  have  not  forgotten 
their  early  struggles  and  the  simple  homes  of  their  childhood. 
As  wealth  becomes  hereditary,  there  will  be  more  who  have  , 
never  known  any  life  except  that  of  luxury,  and  have  never 
had  any  associates  except  the  children  of  the  rich  or  their 
serv^ants.  Formerly  the  wealthiest  man  in  a  village  or  town 
still  lived  in  the  sight  of  all  as  a  member  of  the  community. 
As  the  chasm  widens,  the  rich  withdraw  to  their  own  section 
of  the  city;  they  naturally  use  means  to  screen  themselves 
from  the  intrusive  stare  of  the  public  which  concentrates  its 
gaze  on  them;  they  live  in  a  world  apart,  and  the  mass  of 
the  people  have  distorted  ideas  about  them  and  little  human 
sympathy  for  them.  There  are  indications  enough  how  far 
apart  we  already  are.  We  have  a  new  literature  of  explora-  xT 
tion.     Darkest  Africa  and  the  polar  regions  are  becoming 


252  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

familiar;  but  we  now  have  intrepid  men  and  women  who 
plunge  for  a  time  into  the  life  of  the  lower  classes  and  return 
to  write  books  about  this  unknown  race  that  lives  in  the 
next  block.  It  is  amazing  to  note  how  intelligent  men  and 
women  of  the  upper  classes  bungle  in  their  judgment  on  the 
virtues  and  the  vices  of  the  working  people,  and  vice  versa. 
Socialism  is  coming  to  be  the  very  life-breath  of  the  intelli- 
gent working-class,  but  if  all  the  members  of  all  the  social 
and  literary  clubs  of  a  city  were  examined  on  socialism, 
probably  two-thirds  would  fail  to  pass.  Many  are  still 
content  to  treat  one  of  the  great  elemental  movements  of 
human  history  as  the  artificial  and  transitory  misbehavior 
of  a  few  agitators  and  their  dupes.  The  inability  of  both 
capital  and  labor  to  understand  the  point  of  view  of  the 
other  side  has  been  one  chief  cause  of  trouble,  and  almost 
every  honest  effort  to  get  both  sides  together  on  a  basis  of 
equality  has  acted  like  a  revelation.  But  that  proves  how 
far  they  have  been  apart. 

Individual  sympathy  and  understanding  has  been  our  chief 
reliance  in  the  past  for  overcoming  the  differences  between 
the  social  classes.  The  feelings  and  principles  implanted  by 
Christianity  have  been  a  powerful  aid  in  that  direction.  But 
if  this  sympathy  diminishes  by  the  widening  of  the  social 
chasm,  what  hope  have  we?  It  is  true  that  we  have  an  in- 
creasing number  who,  by  study  and  by  personal  contact  in 
settlement  work  and  otherwise,  are  trying  to  increase  that 
sympathetic  intelligence.  But  it  is  a  question  if  this  con- 
scious effort  of  individuals  is  enough  to  offset  the  uncon- 
scious alienation  created  by  the  dominant  facts  of  life  which 
are  wedging  entire  classes  apart. 

Facts  and  institutions  are  inevitably  followed  by  theories 


THE  PRESENT    CRISIS  253 

to  explain  and  justify  the  existing  institutions.  In  a  political 
democracy  we  have  democratic  theories  of  politics.  In  a 
monarchy  they  have  monarchical  theories.  Wherever  in- 
equality has  been  a  permanent  situation,  theoretical  thought 
has  defended  it.  Aristotle  living  in  a  slaveholding  society  said : 
"There  are  in  the  human  species  individuals  as  inferior  to 
others  as  the  body  is  to  the  soul,  or  as  animals  are  to  men. 
Adapted  to  corporeal  labor  only,  they  are  incapable  of  a 
higher  occupation.  Destined  by  nature  to  slavery,  there  is 
nothing  better  for  them  to  do  than  to  obey."  Similarly  in 
feudal  society  the  lord  regarded  the  serf  as  by  nature  little 
different  from  a  beast  of  burden,  and  even  the  serf  regarded 
oppression  as  a  fixed  fact  in  life,  like  cold  and  rain.  If  we 
allow  deep  and  permanent  inequality  to  grow  up  in  our  coun- 
try, it  is  as  sure  as  gravitation  that  not  only  the  old  democracy 
and  frankness  of  manners  will  go,  but  even  the  theory  of 
human  equality,  which  has  been  part  of  our  spiritual  atmos- 
phere through  Christianity,  will  be  denied.  It  is  already 
widely  challenged. 

Any  shifting  of  the  economic  equilibrium  from  one  class  to  The  crum- 
another  is  sure  to  be  followed  by  a  shifting  of  the  political  poufical 
equilibrium.     If  a  class  arrives  at  economic  wealth,  it  will  democracy, 
gain  political  influence  and  some  form  of  representation.   For 
instance,  when  the  cities  grew  powerful  at  the  close  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  the  lesser  nobles  declined  in  power,  that 
fact  was  registered  in  the  political  constitution  of  the  nations. 
The  French  Revolution  was  the  demand  of  the  business  class 
to  have  a  share  in  political  power  proportionate  to  its  grow- 
ing economic  importance.     A  class  which  is  economically 
strong   will   have    the   necessary   influence   to    secure    and 


254  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

enforce  laws  which  protect  its  economic  interests.  In  turn, 
a  class  which  controls  legislation  will  shape  it  for  its  own  en- 
richment. Politics  is  embroidered  with  patriotic  sentiment 
and  phrases,  but  at  bottom,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
the  economic  interests  dominate  it  always.  If  therefore  we 
have  a  class  which  owns  a  large  part  of  the  national  wealth 
and  controls  nearly  all  the  mobile  part  of  it,  it  is  idle  to  sup- 
pose that  this  class  will  not  see  to  it  that  the  vast  power  exerted 
by  the  machinery  of  government  serves  its  interests.  And  if 
we  have  another  class  which  is  economically  dependent  and 
helpless,  it  is  idle  to  suppose  that  it  will  be  allowed  an  equal 
voice  in  swaying  political  power.  In  short,  we  cannot  join 
economic  inequality  and  political  equality.  As  Oliver  Crom- 
well wrote  to  Parliament,  "If  there  be  any  one  that  makes 
many  poor  to  make  a  few  rich,  that  suits  not  a  Common- 
wealth." The  words  of  Lincoln  find  a  new  application  here, 
that  the  republic  cannot  be  half  slave  and  half  free. 

The  power  of  capitalism  over  the  machinery  of  our  govern- 
ment, and  its  corroding  influence  on  the  morality  of  our  public 
servants,  has  been  revealed  within  recent  years  to  such  an 
extent  that  it  is  almost  superfluous  to  speak  of  it.  If  any  one 
had  foretold  ten  years  ago  the  facts  which  are  now  under- 
stood by  all,  he  would  have  been  denounced  as  an  incurable 
pessimist.  Our  cities  have  surrendered  nearly  all  the  func- 
tions that  bring  an  income,  keeping  only  those  that  demand 
expenditure,  and  they  are  now  so  dominated  by  the  public 
service  corporations  that  it  takes  a  furious  spasm  of  public 
anger,  as  in  Philadelphia,  or  a  long-drawn  battle,  as  in 
Chicago,  to  drive  the  robbers  from  their  intrenchments  in 
the  very  citadel  of  government ;  and  after  the  victory  is  won 
there  is  absolutely  no  guarantee  that  it  will  be  permanent. 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  255 

There  is  probably  not  one  of  our  states  which  is  not  more  or 
less  controlled  by  its  chief  railways.  How  far  our  national 
government  is  constantly  w^arped  in  its  action,  the  man  at  a 
distance  can  hardly  tell,  but  the  public  confidence  in  Congress 
is  deeply  undermined.  Even  the  successful  action  against 
the  meat-packers  and  against  railway  rebates  only  demon- 
strated what  overwhelming  popular  pressure  is  necessary  to 
compel  the  government  to  act  against  these  great  interests. 

The  interference  of  President  Roosevelt  in  the  great  coal 
strike  was  hailed  as  a  demonstration  that  the  people  are  still 
supreme.  In  fact,  it  rather  demonstrated  that  the  supremacy 
of  the  people  is  almost  gone.  The  country  was  on  the  verge 
of  a  vast  public  calamity.  A  sudden  cold  snap  would  have 
sent  Death  through  our  Eastern  cities,  not  with  his  old- 
fashioned  scythe,  but  with  a  modem  reaper.  The  President 
merely  undertook  to  advise  and  persuade,  and  was  met  with 
an  almost  insolent  rejoinder.  Mr.  Jacob  A.  Riis,  in  his  book  V  v 
"Theodore  Roosevelt,  the  Citizen,"  says  that  the  President, 
when  he  concluded  to  interfere,  set  his  face  grimly  and  said : 
"Yes,  I  will  do  it.  I  suppose  that  ends  me;  but  it  is  right, 
and  I  will  do  it."  The  Governor  of  Massachusetts  after- 
ward sent  him  "the  thanks  of  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
in  the  country."  The  President  replied :  "Yes,  we  have  put  it 
through.  But  heavens  and  earth !  It  has  been  a  struggle." 
Mr.  Riis  says,  "It  was  the  nearest  I  ever  knew  him  to  come 
to  showing  the  strain  he  had  been  under."  Now  what  sin- 
ister and  ghostly  power  was  this  with  which  the  President  of 
our  nation  had  wrestled  on  behalf  of  the  people,  and  which 
was  able  to  loosen  even  his  joints  with  fear?  Whose  inter- 
ests were  so  inviolable  that  they  took  precedence  of  the 
safety  of  the  people,  so  that  a  common-sense  action  by  the 


256  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

most  august  officer  of  the  nation  was  likely  to  bring  political 
destruction  upon  him  ?  To  what  extent  is  a  power  so  threat- 
ening able  to  turn  the  government  aside  from  its  functions 
by  silent  pressure,  so  that  its  fundamental  purpose  of  public 
service  is  constantly  frustrated?  Have  we  a  dual  sover- 
eignty, so  that  our  public  officers  are  in  doubt  whom  to 
obey? 

Here  is  another  instance  showing  how  political  power  is 
simply  a  tool  for  the  interests  of  the  dominant  class.  In  1891 
the  Working  Women's  Society  of  New  York  began  to  agitate 
for  proper  sanitary  accommodations  and  seats  for  the  female 
clerks  in  the  department  stores.  This  sensible  bill  was  an- 
nually met  and  defeated  at  Albany  by  a  lobby  of  the  retail 
merchants.  In  1896  it  was  at  last  enacted  and  the  right  of 
inspection  and  enforcement  was  given  to  the  local  boards  of 
health.  For  eighteen  months  it  was  enforced  in  New  York 
in  the  most  tyrannical  manner  to  make  the  law  odious.  The 
Tammany  mayor  then  appointed  one  of  the  owners  of  a  great 
department  store  as  president  of  the  Board  of  Health.  This 
man  said  that  he  desired  the  position  partly  to  quash  an 
indictment  against  a  certain  philanthropic  enterprise  of  his 
and  partly  to  paralyze  the  Mercantile  Inspection  Law.  The 
mayor  suggested  that  the  necessary  appropriation  be  withheld, 
and  so  the  law  became  a  dead  letter. 

To  secure  special  concessions  and  privileges  and  to  evade 
public  burdens  have  always  been  the  objects  for  which 
dominant  classes  used  their  political  power.  For  instance, 
the  feudal  nobility  of  France  originally  held  their  lands  as 
franchises  from  the  crown,  in  return  for  a  tax  of  service, 
chiefly  military,  to  be  rendered  to  the  nation.  When  the 
old  feudal  levies  proved  inefficient  in  the  Hundred  Years' 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  257 

War  with  England,  a  standing  army  was  organized  and 
supported  by  a  money  tax.  The  nobiHty  were  thereby  re- 
Ueved  from  their  old  obligation  of  levying  and  supporting 
soldiers,  yet  they  successfully  evaded  their  share  of  the  tax. 
This  is  merely  a  sample  case.  It  can  safely  be  asserted  that 
throughout  history  the  strongest  have  been  taxed  least,  and  the 
weakest  most.  The  same  condition  prevails  in  our  country. 
The  average  homes  in  the  cities  are  usually  taxed  to  the  limit ; 
the  most  opulent  homes,  and  especially  their  contents,  are 
taxed  lightly.  Vacant  lots,  held  for  speculation,  are  often 
flagrantly  favored,  though  they  are  a  public  nuisance.  In 
1856  taxes  were  paid  in  New  York  State  on  $148,473,154 
worth  of  personal  property  over  and  above  the  capital  of 
banks  and  trust  companies.  During  the  following  forty 
years  the  increase  in  personal  property  in  the  State  was  im- 
mense, yet  in  1896  the  amount  found  for  taxation  had  in- 
creased by  only  $66,000,000.  In  that  year  a  study  was  made 
of  107  estates,  taken  at  random  in  the  State  of  New  York  and 
ranging  from  $54,559  to  $3,319,500.  After  the  death  of  the 
owners  these  estates  disclosed  personalty  aggregating  $215- 
132,366 ;  but  the  year  before  their  deaths  the  owners  had  been 
assessed  only  $3,819,412  on  their  personal  property.  Thirty- 
four  of  them  had  escaped  taxation  altogether.^  An  investi- 
gation by  Professor  E.  W.  Bemis  in  Ohio  in  1901  showed  that 
while  farms  and  homes  were  assessed  at  about  sixty  per  cent 
of  their  value,  railways  were  assessed  at  from  thirty-five  per 
cent  down  to  thirteen  per  cent  of  the  market  value  of  their 
stocks  and  bonds.^  The  interests  which  thus  evade  taxation 
have  usually  been  enriched  by  public  gifts,  by  franchises,  min- 

*  From  an  article  by  Comptroller  Roberts,  Forum,  May,  1897. 

*  The  Outlook,  September  21,  1901,  p.  150. 

s 


25^  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

ing  rights,  water  rights,  the  unearned  increment  of  the  land, 
etc.,  and  yet  they  allow  the  public  burdens  to  settle  on  the 
backs  of  those  classes  who  are  already  fearfully  handi- 
capped. 

The  courts  are  the  instrument  by  which  the  organized 
community  exercises  its  supremacy  over  the  affairs  of  the 
individual,  and  the  control  of  the  courts  is  therefore  of  vital 
concern  to  the  privileged  classes  of  any  nation.  Exemption 
from  the  jurisdiction  of  certain  courts  which  would  be 
troublesome,  was  a  desirable  privilege,  and  both  the  feudal 
aristocracy  and  the  clergy  had  that  privilege.  To  a  wide 
extent  the  feudal  nobles  down  to  our  own  time  had  the 
right  of  jurisdiction  within  their  own  domains,  and  when 
they  sat  as  judges,  they  were  not  likely  to  hurt  their 
own  interests.  The  English  landowners  long  made  the 
law  in  Parliament  and  interpreted  it  in  their  courts.  The 
terrible  punishments  visited,  for  instance,  on  poaching  are 
a  demonstration  how  they  dealt  with  offences  against  their 
cherished  class  rights.  In  our  own  country  all  are  equal 
before  the  law  —  in  theory.  In  practice  there  is  the  most 
serious  inequality.  The  right  of  appeal  as  handled  in  our 
country  gives  tremendous  odds  to  those  who  have  financial 
staying  power.  The  police  court,  which  is  the  poor  man's 
court,  deals  with  him  very  summarily.  If  a  rich  man  and  a 
poor  man  were  alike  fined  $io  for  being  drunk  and  disorderly, 
the  equal  punishment  would  be  exceedingly  unequal.  If  the 
poor  man  is  unable  to  pay  the  fine,  he  gets  ten  days ;  nothing 
likely  to  be  inflicted  on  the  rich  •  man  for  a  similar  offence 
would  hit  him  equally  hard. 

To  what  extent  the  judges  are  actually  corrupt  it  is  probably 
impossible  to  say.      We  have  been  trying  to  keep  up  our 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  259 

courage  amid  the  general  official  corruption  by  asserting  that 
the  integrity  of  the  judiciary  at  least  is  above  reproach.  But 
the  only  thing  that  would  make  them  immune  to  the  general 
disease  is  the  spirit  and  the  tradition  of  their  profession.  But 
class  spirit  and  professional  honor  are  a  rather  fragile  barrier 
against  the  terrible  temptations  which  can  be  offered  by  the 
great  interests,  and  when  that  barrier  is  once  imdermined  by 
evil  example,  it  will  wash  away  with  increasing  speed.  Re- 
cent revelations  have  not  been  calculated  to  cheer  us.  The 
judge  is  frequently  a  successful  politician  before  he  sits  on 
the  bench.  Is  the  sanctifying  power  of  official  responsibility 
so  great  that  it  will  purge  out  the  habits  of  mind  acquired  by 
a  successful  political  career,  as  politics  now  goes  ?  At-  any 
rate,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  study  and  practice  of  the  law 
create  an  ingrained  respect  for  things  as  they  have  been,  and 
that  the  social  sympathies  of  judges  are  altogether  likely  to  be 
with  the  educated  and  possessing  classes.  This  inward  trend 
of  sympathy  is  a  powerful  element  in  determining  a  man's 
judgment  in  single  cases.  That  a  man  should  be  tried  by  a 
jury  of  his  peers  was  so  important  an  historical  conquest, 
because  it  recognized  the  bias  of  class  differences  and  turned 
it  in  favor  of  the  accused.  Unless  a  judge  is  affected  by  the 
new  social  spirit,  he  is  likely  to  be  at  least  unconsciously  on 
the  side  of  those  who  have,  and  this  is  equivalent  to  a  special 
privilege  granted  them  by  the  courts.  Connecticut  alone, 
among  English-speaking  countries,  has  hitherto  permitted 
the  defendant  in  damage  suits  to  transfer  such  suits  from  a 
jury  to  a  bench  of  judges.  When  the  constitution  of  Con- 
necticut was  revised  in  1902,  it  was  proposed  to  make  jury 
trials  mandatory  in  damage  suits.  The  active  "corporation 
group"  in  the  convention  bent  its  chief  interest  toward  the 


26o  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

defeat  of  this  proposition.  In  the  experience  of  corporations, 
judges  must  then  be  more  favorably  disposed  to  them  than 
juries. 

The  ultimate  power  on  which  we  stake  our  hope  in  our 
present  political  decay  is  the  power  of  public  opinion.  When- 
ever some  temporary  victory  has  been  scored  by  the  people, 
the  newspapers  triumphantly  announce  that  the  people  are 
really  still  sovereign,  and  that  nothing  can  resist  public  opinion 
when  once  aroused.  In  reality  this  sheet  anchor  of  our  hope 
is  as  dependable  as  the  wind  that  blows.  It  takes  strenuous 
efforts  to  arouse  the  pubhc.  Only  spectacular  evils  are  likely 
to  impress  it.  When  it  is  aroused,  it  is  easily  turned  against 
some  side  issue  or  some  harmless  scapegoat.  And,  like  all 
passions,  it  is  very  short-Uved  and  sinks  back  to  slumber 
quickly.  Despotic  governments  have  always  trusted  in 
dilatory  tactics,  knowing  well  the  somnolence  of  pubhc 
opinion.  The  same  policy  is  adroitly  used  by  those  who 
exploit  the  people  in  our  country.  To  this  must  be  added  the 
fact  that  the  predatory  interests  are  tampering  with  the  organs 
which  create  public  opinion.  If  public  opinion  is  indeed  so 
great  a  power,  it  is  not  likely  that  it  will  be  overlooked  by 
those  who  are  so  alert  against  all  other  sources  of  danger.  It 
will  not  be  denied  that  some  newspapers  are  directly  in  the 
pay  of  certain  interests  and  are  their  active  champions.  It 
will  not  be  denied  that  the  counting-room  standpoint  is 
profoundly  influential  in  the  editorial  policy  of  all  news- 
papers, and  that  large  advertisers  can  muzzle  most  papers  if 
they  are  determined  on  a  pohcy.  Not  only  the  editorials  are 
affected,  but  the  news  matter.  After  the  first  great  election 
in  Chicago  in  1902,  in  which  the  people  by  referendum 
decided  for  municipal  ownership  of  street  railways  and  of 


THE    PRESENT   CRISIS  261 

the  gas  and  electric  lighting  plants  by  an  astonishing  major- 
ity, the  Associated  Press  despatches  and  the  great  New  York 
dailies  were  almost  or  wholly  silent  on  this  significant  demon- 
stration of  public  ownership  sentiment.  After  the  presiden- 
tial election  of  1892,  in  which  the  Populist  Party  played  so 
important  a  part,  I  was  unable  to  find  any  figures  on  their 
vote  in  the  New  York  daihes.  The  day  after  the  presidential 
election  of  1904,  in  which  the  Socialist  vote  took  its  first  large 
leap  forward,  I  travelled  through  several  States,  but  no  paper 
which  I  saw  contained  the  statistics  of  the  Socialist  vote. 
The  only  fact  mentioned  was  that  their  vote  had  declined  in 
one  or  two  cities.  When  the  Mercantile  Inspection  Bill,  to 
which  reference  was  made  above,  was  before  the  New  York 
legislature,  one  of  the  most  respectable  metropolitan  news- 
papers contained  frequent  articles  and  interviews  opposing 
the  bill  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  department  stores.  One 
of  my  friends,  who  championed  the  bill,  spoke  to  one  of  his 
friends  on  the  staff  of  this  paper  and  asked  him  in  fairness 
to  print  an  interview  on  the  other  side.  The  man  replied, 
"Certainly,  that  is  only  fair,  I  will  go  and  arrange  for  it." 
He  returned  and  said  that  absolute  orders  had  come  from  the 
counting-room  that  nothing  in  favor  of  the  bill  was  to  be 
printed.  Now  the  justice  and  efficiency  of  democratic  gov- 
ernment depend  on  the  intelligence  and  information  of  the 
citizens.  If  they  are  purposely  misled  by  distorted  informa- 
tion or  by  the  suppression  of  important  information,  the 
larger  jury  before  which  all  public  causes  have  to  be  pleaded 
is  tampered  with,  and  the  innermost  life  of  our  republic  is  in 
danger. 

In  an  address  before  the  Nineteenth  Century  Club  in  1904, 
Professor  Franklin  H.  Giddings,  one  of  the  most  eminent 


262  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

sociologists  of  our  country,  said :  "We  are  witnessing  to-day, 
beyond  question,  the  decay  —  perhaps  not  permanent,  but 
at  any  rate  the  decay  —  of  republican  institutions.  No  man 
in  his  right  mind  can  deny  it."  We  have,  in  fact,  one  kind  of 
constitution  on  paper,  and  another  system  of  government  in 
fact.  That  is  usually  the  way  when  a  slow  revolution  is 
taking  place  in  the  distribution  of  political  and  economic 
power.  The  old  structure  apparently  remains  intact,  but 
actually  the  seat  of  power  has  changed.  The  Merovingian 
kings  remained  kings  long  after  all  real  power  had  passed 
to  the  Major  Domo  and  they  had  become  attenuated  rehcs. 
The  Senate  of  Rome  and  the  consuls  continued  to  transact 
business  in  the  time-hallowed  way,  though  they  merely 
registered  the  will  of  the  real  sovereign.  The  president  of  a 
great  university  has  predicted  that  we  shall  have  an  emperor 
within  twenty  years.  We  shall  probably  never  have  an 
emperor,  but  we  may  have  a  chairman  of  some  committee  or 
other,  some  person  not  even  mentioned  in  any  constitution  or 
law,  who  will  be  the  de  facto  emperor  of  our  republic.  Names 
are  trifles.  An  emperor  by  any  other  name  will  smell  as 
sweet.  The  chief  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  called  Caesar 
or  Augustus,  which  happened  to  be  the  names  of  the  men  who 
first  concentrated  power  in  that  form.  When  the  tottering 
Empire  rested  on  military  force  alone,  the  prefect  of  the 
praetorian  guard  came  to  be  the  virtual  prime  minister, 
uniting  the  chief  judicial  and  executive  functions  in  his  hands. 
The  boss  in  American  political  life  is  the  extra-constitutional 
ruler  simply  because  he  stands  for  the  really  dominant  pow- 
ers. 

The  pohtical  life  of  a  nation  represents  the  manner  in 
which  that  nation  manages  its  common  affairs.     It  is  not  a 


THE   PRESENT    CRISIS  263 

thing  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  national  life.  It  is  the  direct 
outgrowth  of  present  forces  and  realities,  somewhat  modified 
by  past  traditions,  and  in  turn  it  intensifies  the  conditions 
which  shape  it.  The  ideal  of  our  government  was  to  dis- 
tribute political  rights  and  powers  equally  among  the  citizens. 
But  a  state  of  such  actual  inequality  has  grown  up  among  the 
citizens  that  this  ideal  becomes  unworkable.  According  to 
the  careful  calculations  of  Mr.  Charles  B.  Spahr,  one  per  cent 
of  the  families  in  our  country  held  more  than  half  of  the  ag- 
gregate wealth  of  the  country,  more  than  all  the  rest  of  the 
nation  put  together.^  And  that  was  in  1890.  Is  it  likely 
that  this  small  minority,  which  is  so  powerful  in  possessions, 
will  be  content  with  one  per  cent  of  the  political  power  where- 
with to  protect  these  possessions?  Seven-eighths  of  the 
families  held  only  one-eighth  of  the  national  wealth.  Has  it 
ever  happened  in  history  that  such  a  seven-eighths  would  per- 
manently be  permitted  to  wield  seven-eighths  of  all  political 
power  ?  If  we  want  approximate  political  equality,  we  must 
have  approximate  economic  equality.  If  we  attempt  it 
otherwise,  we  shall  be  bucking  against  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion. But  when  we  consider  what  a  long  and  sore  struggle 
it  cost  to  achieve  political  liberty ;  what  a  splendid  destiny  a 
true  republic  planted  on  this  glorious  territorial  base  of  ours 
might  have ;  what  a  mission  of  liberty  our  country  might  have 
for  all  the  nations  —  it  may  well  fill  the  heart  of  every  patriot 
with  the  most  poignant  grief  to  think  that  this  liberty  may 
perish  once  more ;  that  our  birthright  among  the  nations  may 
be  lost  to  us  by  our  greed ;  and  that  already  our  country, 
instead  of  being  the  great  incentive  to  political  democracy  in 

*  Charles  B.  Spahr,  "Distribution  of  Wealth  in  the  United  States."     See 
also  George  K.  Holmes,  Political  Science  Qtiarterly,  1893,  p.  591. 


264  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

other  nations,  is  a  heavy  handicap  on  the  democratic  move- 
ment, an  example  to  which  the  opponents  of  democracy 
abroad  point  with  pleasure  and  which  the  lovers  of  popular 
liberty  pass  with  averted  face. 

The  tainting  Our  moral  character  is  wrought  out  by  choosing  the  right 
atmosphere,  when  we  are  offered  the  wrong.  It  is  neither  possible  nor 
desirable  to  create  a  condition  in  which  the  human  soul  will 
not  have  to  struggle  with  temptation.  But  there  are  con- 
ditions in  which  evil  is  so  dominant  and  its  attraction  so 
deadly  and  irresistible,  that  no  wise  man  will  want  to  expose 
himself  or  his  children  to  such  odds.  Living  in  a  tainted 
atmosphere  does  not  increase  the  future  capacity  of  the  body 
to  resist  disease.  Swimming  is  hard  work  and  therefore 
good  exercise,  but  not  swimming  where  the  undertow  locks 
the  swimmer's  limbs  in  leaden  embrace  and  drags  him 
down. 

We  cannot  conceal  from  ourselves  that  in  some  directions 
the  temptations  of  modem  life  are  so  virulent  that  characters 
and  reputations  are  collapsing  all  about  us  with  sickening 
frequency.  The  prevalence  of  fraud  and  the  subtler  kinds 
of  dishonesty  for  which  we  have  invented  the  new  term 
"graft,"  is  a  sinister  fact  of  the  gravest  import.  It  is  not 
merely  the  weak  who  fall,  but  the  strong.  Clean,  kindly, 
religious  men  stoop  to  methods  so  tricky,  hard,  and  rapacious, 
that  we  stand  aghast  whenever  the  curtain  is  drawn  aside 
and  we  are  shown  the  inside  facts.  Every  business  man  who 
has  any  finer  moral  discernment  will  realize  that  he  himself 
is  constantly  driven  by  the  pressure  of  business  necessity 
into  actions  of  which  he  is  ashamed.  Men  do  not  want 
to  do  these  things ;   but  in  a  given  situation  they  have  to,  if 


THE  PRESENT  CRISIS  265 

they  want  to  survive  or  prosper,  and  the  sum  of  these  crooked 
actions  gives  an  evil  turn  to  their  life. 

If  it  were  proposed  to  invent  some  social  system  in  which 
covetousness  would  be  deliberately  fostered  and  intensified 
in  human  nature,  what  system  could  be  devised  which  would 
excel  our  own  for  this  purpose?  Competitive  commerce 
exalts  selfishness  to  the  dignity  of  a  moral  principle.  It  pits 
men  against  one  another  in  a  gladiatorial  game  in  which 
there  is  no  mercy  and  in  which  ninety  per  cent  of  the  com- 
batants finally  strew  the  arena.  It  makes  Ishmaels  of  our 
best  men  and  teaches  them  that  their  hand  must  be  against 
every  man,  since  every  man  *s  hand  is  against  them.  It  makes 
men  who  are  the  gentlest  and  kindliest  friends  and  neighbors, 
relentless  taskmasters  in  their  shops  and  stores,  who  will 
drain  the  strength  of  their  men  and  pay  their  female  employees 
wages  on  which  no  girl  can  live  without  supplementing  them 
in  some  way.  It  spreads  things  before  us  and  beseeches 
and  persuades  us  to  buy  what  we  do  not  want.  The  show- 
windows  and  bargain-counters  are  institutions  for  the  pro- 
motion of  covetousness  among  women.  Men  offer  us 
goods  on  credit  and  dangle  the  smallness  of  the  first  in- 
stalment before  our  eyes  as  an  incentive  to  go  into  debt 
heedlessly.  They  try  to  break  down  the  foresight  and  self- 
restraint  which  are  the  slow  product  of  moral  education,  and 
reduce  us  to  the  moral  habits  of  savages  who  gorge  to-day  and 
fast  to-morrow.  Kleptomania  multiplies.  It  is  the  inevitable 
product  of  a  social  life  in  which  covetousness  is  stimulated  by 
all  the  ingenuity  of  highly  paid  specialists.  The  large  stores 
have  to  take  the  most  elaborate  precautions  against  fraud  by 
their  employees  and  pilfering  by  their  respectable  customers. 
The  finest  hotels  are  plundered  by  their  wealthy  patrons  of 


266  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

anything  from  silver  spoons  down  to  marked  towels.  After 
the  annual  Ladies'  Day  at  a  prominent  club  in  Chicago  over 
two  hundred  spoons  and  two  hundred  thirty-seven  sprigs  of 
artificial  decoration,  besides  miniature  vases  and  bric-a-brac, 
were  missing,  and  that  is  always  the  case  after  Ladies'  Day, 
and  never  at  other  times.  At  a  reform  school  for  boys  two 
lads  were  pointed  out  to  me  as  the  sons  of  two  men  of  great 
wealth.  They  had  been  placed  there  by  their  parents  to  cure 
them  of  their  inveterate  habit  of  stealing.  Their  fathers 
were  in  the  United  States  Senate.  Our  business  life  borders 
so  closely  on  dishonesty  that  men  are  hardly  aware  when  they 
cross  the  line.  It  is  a  penal  offence  for  a  government  officer 
to  profit  by  a  contract  which  he  awards  or  mediates ;  in  busi- 
ness life  that  is  an  everyday  occurrence.  No  wonder  that  our 
officials  are  corrupt  when  their  corruption  is  the  respectability 
of  business  life. 

Gambling  is  the  vice  of  the  savage.  True  civilization  ought 
to  outgrow  it,  as  it  has  outgrown  tattooing  and  cannibalism. 
Instead  of  that  our  commercial  life  stimulates  the  gambling 
instinct.  Our  commerce  is  speculative  in  its  very  nature. 
Of  course  risk  is  inseparable  from  human  life.  It  is  the 
virtue  of  the  pioneer  to  take  risks  boldly.  Every  field  sown 
by  the  farmer  represents  a  certain  risk.  But  the  element  of 
labor  is  the  main  thing  in  the  farmer's  work  and  that  makes 
the  process  wholesome.  In  the  measure  in  which  productive 
labor  is  eliminated  and  the  risk  taken  becomes  the  sole  title 
to  the  profit  gained,  the  transaction  approximates  gambling. 
Above  the  entrance  of  an  Eastern  penal  institution  the  motto 
has  been  inscribed,  "The  worst  day  in  the  life  of  a  young 
man  is  when  he  gets  the  idea  that  he  can  make  a  dollar 
without  doing  a  dollar's  worth  of  work  for  it."    That  is  good 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  267 

sense,  but  how  would  that  motto  look  on  the  walls  of  the  '^ 
New  York  Stock  Exchange  or  the  Chicago  Produce  Ex- 
change? If  a  man  buys  stock  or  wheat  on  a  margin  and 
clears  a  hundred  dollars,  what  labor  or  service  has  he  given 
for  which  this  is  the  reward  ?  In  what  respect  does  it  differ 
from  crap-shooting  in  which  a  boy  risks  his  pennies  and  uses 
his  skill  just  like  the  speculator?  In  Europe,  lotteries  are 
state  institutions  and  prized  privileges  of  churches  and  benev- 
olent undertakings.  We  have  fortunately  outlawed  them 
in  our  country,  but  gambling  is  one  of  our  national  vices 
because  our  entire  commerce  is  saturated  with  the  spirit  of  it. 
The  social  nature  of  man  makes  him  an  imitative  creature 
The  instinct  of  imitation  and  emulation  may  be  a  powerful 
lever  for  good  if  individuals  and  classes  set  the  example  of 
real  culture  and  refinement  of  manners  and  taste.  But  the 
processes  of  competitive  industry  have  poured  vast  wealth  into 
the  lap  of  a  limited  number  and  have  created  an  unparal- 
leled lavishness  of  expenditure  which  has  nothing  ennobling 
about  it.  Those  who  have  to  work  hard  for  their  money  will, 
as  a  rule,  be  careful  how  they  spend  it.  Those  who  get  it 
without  effort,  will  spend  it  without  thought.  Thus  parasitic 
wealth  is  sure  to  create  a  vicious  luxury,  which  then  acts  as 
a  centre  of  infection  for  all  other  classes.  Fashions  operate 
downward.  Each  class  tries  to  imitate  the  one  higher  up, 
and  to  escape  from  the  imitation  of  those  lower  down.  Thus 
the  ostentation  of  the  overfull  purses  of  the  predatory  rich 
lures  all  society  into  the  worship  of  false  gods.  It  intensi- 
fies "  the  lust  of  the  eye  and  the  pride  of  life  "  unnaturally,  and 
to  that  extent  expels  "  the  love  of  the  Father,"  which  includes 
the  love  of  all  true  values.  Any  one  can  test  the  matter  in  his 
own  case  by  asking  himself  how  much  of  his  money,  his  time, 


268  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

and  his  worry  is  consumed  in  merely  "keeping  up  with  the 
procession,"  and  is  diverted  from  real  culture  to  mere  dis- 
play by  the  compulsion  of  social  requirements  about  him. 
The  man  who  lives  only  on  his  labor  is  brought  into  social 
competition  with  people  who  have  additional  income  through 
rents  and  profits,  and  must  break  his  back  merely  to  keep  his 
wife  and  children  on  a  level  with  others.  The  very  spirit  of 
democracy  which  has  wiped  out  the  old  class  lines  in  modem 
life,  makes  the  rivalry  keener.  In  Europe  a  peasant  girl  or  a 
servant  formerly  was  quite  content  with  the  dress  of  her  class 
and  had  no  ambition  to  rival  the  very  different  dress  of  the 
gentry.  With  us  the  instinct  of  imitation  works  without  a 
barrier  from  the  top  of  the  social  pyramid  to  the  bottom, 
and  the  whole  process  of  consumption  throughout  society  is 
y  feverishly  aflFected  by  the  aggregation  of  unearned  money  at 
the  top.  The  embezzlements  of  business  men,  the  nervous 
breakdown  of  women,  the  ruin  of  girls,  the  neglect  of  home 
and  children,  are  largely  caused  by  the  unnatural  pace  of 
expenditures.  If  the  rich  had  only  what  they  earned,  and  the 
poor  had  all  that  they  earned,  all  wheels  would  revolve  more 
slowly  and  life  would  be  more  sane. 

Industry  and  commerce  are  in  their  nature  productive  and 
therefore  good.  But  in  our  industry  a  strong  element  of 
rapacity  vitiates  the  moral  qualities  of  business  life.  A 
railway  president  in  New  York  said  to  me  —  half  in  joke,  of 
•  course:  "The  men  who  go  down  town  on  the  Elevated 
at  seven  and  eight  o'clock  really  make  things.  We  who  go 
down  at  nine  and  ten,  only  try  to  take  things  away  from  one 
another."  Supplying  goods  to  the  people  is,  of  course,  the 
main  thing ;  but  crowding  out  the  other  man,  who  also  wants 
to  supply  them,  takes  a  large  part  of  the  time  and  energy  of 


THE  PRESENT  CRISIS  269 

business.  Our  competitive  life  has  so  deeply  warped  our 
moral  judgment  that  not  one  man  in  a  thousand  will  realize 
anything  immoral  in  attracting  another  man's  customers. 
"Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's  trade"  is  not  in  our 
decalogue. 

The  same  instinct  of  rapacity  cheats  the  consumer.  They 
sell  us  fruit-jam  made  without  fruit ;  butter  that  never  saw 
the  milk-pail ;  potted  chicken  that  grunted  in  the  barnyard ; 
all-wool  goods  that  never  said  "baah, "  but  leave  it  to  the 
buyer  to  say  it.  If  a  son  asks  for  bread,  his  father  will  not 
offer  him  a  stone;  but  ground  soapstone  is  freely  advertised 
as  an  adulterant  for  flour.  Several  years  ago  the  Secretary  of 
Agriculture,  on  the  basis  of  an  extensive  inquiry,  estimated 
that  thirty  per  cent  of  the  money  paid  for  food  products  in  the 
United  States  is  paid  for  adulterated  or  misbranded  goods.* 
We  are  fortunate  if  the  title  of  the  food  is  false,  but  the  food  is 
wholesome.  But  when  fruit  flavors  are  made  with  coal-tar 
and  benzoic  acid,  and  when  the  milk  for  our  children  is  pre- 
served with  formaldehyde,  the  rapacity  becomes  murderous. 
The  life  of  a  mother  or  a  child  may  depend  on  the  purity  of  a 
medicine  administered  at  the  critical  stage  of  a  disease;  but 
we  have  very  little  guarantee  that  our  medicines  are  not 
adulterated.  In  1904  the  Board  of  Health  in  New  York  City 
had  a  list  of  about  three  hundred  druggists  and  dealers  who 
had  attempted  to  sell  spurious  mixtures  to  the  very  officers 

*  Senator  McCumber,  in  a  speech  in  the  Senate,  January  23,  1906.  He 
added  that  if  we  reduced  the  estimate  to  fifteen  per  cent  to  be  conservative, 
the  amount  would  be  about  $1,750,000,000.  To-day  it  would  be  safely 
estimated  at  $3,000,000,000.  Our  people  would  then  annually  pay  for 
fraudulent  and  adulterated  goods  enough  to  pay  the  national  debt  thrice 
over.  We  shall  wait  to  see  how  much  permanent  change  the  new  Pure 
Food  Law  will  make. 


270  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

of  the  Board.  Most  of  the  patent  medicines  to  which  our 
people  trust  are  cheap  and  worthless  concoctions.  Others 
are  insidious  conveyers  of  narcotic  poisons  which  are  intended 
to  set  up  a  morbid  appetite  in  the  consumers  for  the  profit 
of  the  dealers.  And  if  patent  medicines  were  as  health- 
giving  as  they  claim  to  be,  the  very  principle  of  patenting  and 
withholding  from  general  use  a  beneficent  invention  for  the 
saving  of  human  life  would  be  a  shameful  confession  of 
selfish  greed.  The  liquor  traffic  presents  a  striking  case  of  a 
huge  industry  inducing  people  to  buy  what  harms  them.  It 
is  militant  capitalism  rotting  human  lives  and  characters  to 
distil  dividends.  In  the  atrocities  on  the  Congo  we  have  the 
same  capitalism  doing  its  pitiless  work  in  a  safe  and  distant 
comer  of  the  world,  on  an  inferior  race,  and  under  the  full 
support  of  the  government.  The  rapacity  of  commerce  has 
been  the  secret  spring  of  most  recent  wars.  Speculative 
finance  is  the  axis  on  which  international  politics  revolve. 

The  counts  in  the  indictment  against  our  marvellous  civ- 
ilization could  be  multiphed  at  pleasure.  It  is  a  splendid 
sinner,  "magnificent  in  sin."  The  words  which  Bret  Harte 
addressed  to  San  Francisco  in  its  earlier  days,  characterize 
the  whole  of  modem  society:  — 

"  I  know  thy  cunning  and  thy  greed, 
Thy  hard,  high  lust  and  wilful  deed, 
And  all  thy  glory  loves  to  tell 
Of  specious  gifts  material." 

It  defrauds  the  customer  who  buys  its  goods.  It  drains  and 
brutalizes  the  workman  who  does  its  work.  It  hunts  the 
business  man  with  fear  of  failure,  or  makes  him  hard  with 
merciless  success.  It  plays  with  the  loaded  dice  of  false 
prospectuses  and  watered  stock,  and  the  vaster  its  operations 


THE  PRESENT  CRISIS  271 

become,  the  more  do  they  love  the  darkness  rather  than  the 
light.  It  corrupts  all  that  it  touches,  —  politics,  education,  the 
Church.  For  a  profession  to  be  "commercialized"  means  to 
be  demoralized.  The  only  realms  of  life  in  which  we  are  still 
glad  and  happy  are  those  in  which  the  laws  of  commerce  are 
not  practised.  If  they  entered  the  home,  even  that  would  be 
heU. 

Industry  and  commerce  are  good.  They  serve  the  needs 
of  men.  The  men  eminent  in  industry  and  commerce  are 
good  men,  with  the  fine  qualities  of  human  nature.  But  the 
organization  of  industry  and  commerce  is  such  that  along 
with  its  useful  service  it  carries  death,  physical  and  moral. 
Frederick  Denison  Maurice,  one  of  the  finest  minds  of  Eng- 
land in  the  Victorian  Age,  said,  "  I  do  not  see  my  way  farther 
than  this,  Competition  is  put  forth  as  the  law  of  the  uni- 
verse; that  is  a  lie."  And  his  friend  Charles  Kingsley 
added,  "Competition  means  death;  cooperation  means  life." 
Every  joint-stock  company,  trust,  or  labor  union  organized, 
every  extension  of  government  interference  or  government 
ownership,  is  a  surrender  of  the  competitive  principle  and  a 
halting  step  toward  cooperation.  Practical  men  take  these 
steps  because  competition  has  proved  itself  suicidal  to  eco- 
nomic welfare.  Christian  men  have  a  stouter  reason  for 
turning  against  it,  because  it  slays  human  character  and 
denies  human  brotherhood.  If  money  dominates,  the  ideal 
cannot  dominate.  If  we  serve  mammon,  we  cannot  serve 
the  Christ. 

We  have  purposely  left  to  the  last  what  properly  comes  The  un- 
first  in  any  consideration  of  social  life.     The  family  is  the  of  the 
structural  cell  of  the  social  organism.     In  it  lives  the  power  family. 


272  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

of  propagation  and  renewal  of  life.  It  is  the  foundation  of 
morality,  the  chief  educational  institution,  and  the  source  of 
nearly  all  the  real  contentment  among  men.  To  create  a 
maximum  number  of  happy  families  might  well  be  consid- 
ered the  end  of  all  statesmanship.  As  President  Roose- 
velt recently  said,  all  other  questions  sink  into  insignificance 
when  the  stability  of  the  family  is  at  stake.  The  most  sig- 
nificant part  of  that  utterance  was  that  such  a  thing  had  to 
be  uttered  at  all. 

Hard  times  are  always  marked  by  a  downward  curve  in 
the  percentage  of  marriages.  In  our  country  the  decline  has 
become  chronic  for  some  years  past.  Men  marry  late,  and 
when  the  mating  season  of  youth  is  once  past,  many  never 
marry  at  all.  In  my  city  of  Rochester,  N.Y.,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  162,608,  the  census  of  1900  showed  25,219  men 
between  the  age  of  25  and  44,  the  years  during  which  a 
man  ought  to  be  enjoying  a  home  and  rearing  children,  and 
7355  of  them  were  still  unmarried.  There  were  28,218 
women  of  the  same  years,  relatively  further  along  in  mar- 
riageable age  than  the  men,  and  8109  were  still  unmarried. 

Now  the  attraction  between  men  and  women  is  just  as  fun- 
damental a  fact  in  social  life  as  the  attraction  of  the  earth 
is  in  physics,  and  the  only  way  in  which  that  tremendous 
force  of  desire  can  be  prevented  from  wrecking  lives  is  to 
make  it  build  lives  by  home  contentment.  The  existence  of 
a  large  class  of  involuntary  celibates  in  society  is  a  more 
threatening  fact  even  than  the  increase  of  divorces.  The 
slums  are  aggregations  of  single  men  and  women.  If  the 
monastic  celibates  of  the  Middle  Ages,  who  had  the  power- 
ful incentive  of  religious  enthusiasm  and  all  the  preventives 
of  isolation  and  supervision,  could  not  keep  chaste,  is  it 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  273 

likely  that  the  unmarried  thousands  in  the  freedom  of  mod- 
ern life  will  maintain  their  own  purity  and  respect  the  purity 
of  others  ?  They  are  thrust  into  the  lonely  life  through  no 
wise  resolve  of  their  own,  but  mainly  through  the  fear  that 
they  will  not  be  able  to  maintain  a  family  in  the  standard 
of  comfort  which  they  deem  necessary  for  their  Hfe. 

If  a  man  and  woman  do  marry,  they  do  not  yet  constitute  J 
a  true  family.  The  little  hand  of  a  child,  more  than  the 
blessing  of  a  priest,  consecrates  the  family.  France  has  long 
been  held  up  as  furnishing  the  terrible  example  of  a  declin- 
ing birth-rate,  but  the  older  portions  of  our  country  are  saved 
from  the  same  situation  only  by  the  fertility  of  the  immigrants. 
The  native  population  of  New  England  would  not  reproduce 
itself. 

The  chief  cause  for  this  profoundly  important  fact  is 
economic  fear.  Whenever  the  economic  condition  of  any  ^ 
class  is  hopeful  and  improving,  there  is  an  increase  in  the 
birth-rate.  Whenever  there  is  economic  disaster  or  increasing 
pressure,  there  is  a  decline.  In  the  West,  where  land  is  still 
abundant,  families  are  large.  The  immigrants,  who  feel  the 
relative  easement  of  pressure,  multiply.  The  natives,  who 
suffer  by  the  competition  of  the  immigrants  and  who  feel 
the  tightening  grip  of  our  industrial  development,  refuse  to 
bring  children  into  a  world  which  threatens  them  with 
poverty. 

Our  cheerful  newspaper  optimists  assure  us  that  the  Ameri- 
can child  makes  up  by  quality  what  it  lacks  in  numbers. 
They  quote  the  reply  of  the  lioness  in  the  fable,  "  One,  but 
a  lion."  But  that  is  merely  an  effort  to  make  an  ugly  fact 
look  sweet.  People  hunting  for  apartments  in  a  large  city 
soon  discover  one  cause.     "As  arrows  in  the  hand  of  a 


274  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

mighty  man,  so  are  the  children  of  youth,"  said  the  Psalmist. 
"Happy  is  the  man  that  hath  his  quiver  full  of  them;  they 
shall  not  be  put  to  shame  when  they  speak  with  their  enemies 
in  the  gate."  But  they  shall  talk  very  humbly  and  beseech- 
ingly when  they  speak  with  their  prospective  landlords  now- 
adays. The  concentration  of  population  in  the  cities  through 
competitive  necessities,  the  consequent  increase  in  rents,  the 
enforced  proximity  to  undesirable  neighbors,  the  rise  in  the 
standard  of  luxury  together  with  the  decreased  purchasing 
power  of  the  average  income  —  these  account  in  the  main 
for  the  declining  birth-rate.  When  men  are  hardly  able  to 
keep  their  head  above  water,  they  fear  to  carry  a  child  on 
their  back.  Fear  stands  where  the  spring  of  life  should 
bubble  and  freezes  it  into  subsidence.  That  situation  raises 
the  most  serious  questions  in  the  most  intimate  morality  of 
human  life.  Moreover,  the  absence  of  children  decreases 
the  cohesive  power  of  the  married  relation,  the  blitheness 
and  youthfulness  of  life,  the  unselfishness  of  character,  the  in- 
sight into  human  nature;  in  short,  it  blights  much  of  what 
is  really  fine  and  high  in  the  souls  and  relations  of  men.  The 
luxury  and  culture  made  possible  by  the  absence  of  children 
is  a  glittering  varnish  to  cover  decaying  wood. 

The  menace  to  the  future  of  our  nation  is  still  greater 
through  the  fact  that  sterility  is  most  marked  among  the  able 
and  educated  families.  The  shiftless,  and  all  those  with 
whom  natural  passion  is  least  restrained,  will  breed  most 
freely.  The  prudent  consider  and  shrink.  The  poor  have 
little  to  lose.  Children  are  their  form  of  old-age  pensions. 
The  well-to-do  see  the  possible  depth  to  which  they  or  their 
children  may  descend,  and  are  afraid.  Thus  the  reproduc- 
tion of  the  race  is  left  to  the  poor  and  ignorant.     Unusual 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  275 

ability  is  not  transmitted.  The  benefits  of  intellectual  en- 
vironment fail  to  be  prolonged  by  heredity.  The  vital  sta- 
tistics of  Harvard  and  Columbia  graduates  show  a  rapidly 
declining  birth-rate  and  complete  failure  to  reproduce  their 
own  number.^  I  sat  at  a  table  with  seven  of  the  best  and 
ablest  men  I  know.  We  talked  of  children  and  found  that 
only  two  had  a  child ;  one  of  the  two  was  a  Swede,  the  other 
the  son  of  German  immigrants.  In  a  previous  chapter  we 
referred  to  the  loss  suffered  by  mankind  through  the  sterility 
of  its  most  jideal  individuals  while  monasticism  and  priestly 
celibacy  prevailed.^  Here  we  have  a  fact  of  equal  historical 
significance,  but  unrelieved  by  the  idealism  of  the  monastic 
vow.  Education  can  only  train  the  gifts  with  which  a  child 
is  endowed  at  birth.  The  intellectual  standard  of  humanity 
can  be  raised  only  by  the  propagation  of  the  capable.  Our 
social  system  causes  an  unnatural  selection  of  the  weak  for 
breeding,  and  the  result  is  the  survival  of  the  unfittest. 

When  the  family  is  small,  the  influence  of  brothers  and 
sisters  on  the  formation  of  character  is  lacking.  When  the 
father  has  to  work  long  hours  and  then  spend  additional  time 
in  travelling  between  his  home  and  his  work,  the  element  of 
fatherhood  in  the  home  is  reduced  to  a  minimum.  If  the 
mother,  too,  goes  out  to  work,  the  children  are  left  to  "the 
street,"  which  is  an  educator  of  rather  doubtful  value.  If 
boarders  and  roomers  are  taken  in  to  help  in  paying  the  rent, 

*  President  Eliot,  in  the  annual  report  of  Harvard,  1903,  gives  the  vital 
statistics  of  six  classes  more  than  twenty-five  years  out  of  college.  They  fell 
about  twenty-eight  per  cent  short  of  reproducing  themselves.  Professor 
Thomdike  of  Columbia  University  finds  that  there  has  been  a  steady  decline 
of  the  average  number  of  children  from  5.6  in  the  classes  graduating  1803- 
1809  down  to  1.8  in  the  classes  graduating  1875-1879. 

2  p.  174. 


2/6  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

an  alien  and  often  a  demoralizing  element  enters  the  family. 
Thus  the  economic  situation  everywhere  saps  family  life. 

One  family  to  one  house  is  the  only  normal  condition. 
When  twenty  families  live  in  one  tenement,  twenty  souls 
inhabit  one  body.  That  was  the  condition  of  the  demoniac 
of  Gadara,  in  whom  dwelt  a  legion.     He  was  crazy. 

To  be  a  home  in  the  fullest  sense,  it  must  be  loved  with 
the  sense  of  proprietorship.  As  cities  grow,  home  owner- 
ship declines.  A  semi-vagrancy  from  one  flat  to  the  next 
grows  up.  In  the  borough  of  Manhattan  only  six  per  cent 
of  the  homes  are  owned  by  those  who  live  in  them ;  in  Phila- 
delphia, a  city  of  small  houses,  only  twenty- two  per  cent  own 
their  homes.  Rochester  is  an  almost  ideal  city  for  the  devel- 
opment of  homes,  and  the  popular  assumption  is  that  nearly 
everybody  owns  his  home.  Yet  the  census  of  1900  showed 
that  of  the  33,964  homes  in  the  city  only  12,290  were  owned 
by  the  tenants,  and  half  of  these  were  mortgaged. 

The  condition  of  the  home  determines  the  condition  of 
woman.  If  girls  are  eagerly  sought  in  marriage,  they  can 
choose  the  best.  If  few  men  can  afford  a  good  home,  girls 
must  take  what  offers  or  go  without.  If  a  man  can  easily 
make  a  living  for  a  family,  he  can  afford  to  be  indifferent  to 
anything  but  the  person  of  the  woman  he  loves.  As  the 
economic  pressure  tightens  and  social  classes  grow  more 
clearly  defined,  American  men,  too,  will  begin  to  inquire  what 
property  comes  to  them  with  their  bride.  We  shall  have  love 
modified  by  the  ''dot:' 

Our  optimists  treat  it  as  a  sign  of  progress  that  "so  many 
professions  are  now  open  to  women."  But  it  is  not  choice, 
but  grim  necessity,  that  drives  woman  into  new  ways  of 
getting  bread  and  clothing.     The  great  majority  of  girls 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  277 

heartily  prefer  the  independence  and  the  satisfaction  of  the 
heart  which  are  offered  to  a  woman  only  in  a  comfortable 
and  happy  home.  Some  educated  girls  think  they  prefer 
the  practice  of  a  profession  because  the  dream  of  unusual 
success  lures  them ;  but  when  they  have  had  a  taste  of  the 
wearing  routine  that  prevails  in  most  professions,  they  turn 
with  longing  to  the  thought  of  a  home  of  their  own.  Our 
industrial  machine  has  absorbed  the  functions  which  women 
formerly  fulfilled  in  the  home,  and  has  drawn  them  into  its 
hopper  because  female  labor  is  unorganized  and  cheap  labor. 
They  are  made  to  compete  with  the  very  men  who  ought  to 
marry  them,  and  thus  they  further  diminish  their  own  chance 
of  marriage.  If  any  one  has  a  sound  reason  for  taking  the 
competitive  system  by  the  throat  in  righteous  wrath,  it  is  the 
unmarried  woman  and  the  mother  with  girls. 

Girls  go  to  work  at  the  very  age  when  their  developing 
body  ought  to  be  shielded  from  physical  and  mental  strain.  \. 
Many  are  kept  standing  for  long  hours  at  a  time.  During 
rush  seasons  they  are  pushed  to  exhaustion.  In  few  cases 
can  they  permit  themselves  that  periodical  easement  which 
is  essential  to  the  continued  health  of  most  women.  Many 
of  them  enter  marriage  with  organic  troubles  that  develop 
their  full  import  only  in  later  years.  Girls  pass  from  school 
to  shop  or  store  and  never  learn  housekeeping  well.  If  they 
marry,  they  assume  charge  of  a  manufacturing  establishment 
in  which  all  the  varied  functions  are  performed  by  one  woman. 
They  have  to  learn  the  work  at  an  age  when  the  body  no 
longer  acquires  new  habits  readily.  If  the  burden  of  ma- 
ternity is  added  at  the  same  time,  the  strain  is  immense,  and 
is  likely  to  affect  the  temper  and  the  happiness  of  the  home. 
It  is  thus  our  civilization  prepares  its  women  for  the  all- 


278  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

important  function  of  motherhood,  for  on  the  women  of  the 
working  class  rests  the  function  of  bearing  and  rearing  the 
future  citizens  of  the  repubhc.  Individually  Americans  are 
more  tender  of  women  than  any  other  nation.  Collectively 
we  treat  them  with  cruelty  and  folly. 

A  large  proportion  of  working  women  are  not  paid  wages 
sufficient  to  support  themselves  in  comfort  and  to  dress  as 
the  requirements  of  their  position  and  of  modern  taste  de- 
mand. In  that  case  they  must  either  suffer  want  or  sup- 
plement their  earnings.  They  are  fortunate  if  fathers  and 
brothers  support  the  home.  In  that  case  they  are  able  to 
underbid  those  who  are  dependent  on  their  own  labor  alone. 
If  the  home  does  not  thus  shield  them,  what  are  they  to  do  ? 
There  are  numbers  of  unmarried  and  married  men  about 
them  looking  for  transient  love.  The  girls  themselves  have 
the  womanly  desire  for  the  company  and  love  of  men.  Sat- 
isfaction by  marriage  may  not  be  in  sight.  They  crave  for 
the  clothing,  the  trinkets,  the  pleasures  that  glitter  about 
them.  It  is  so  easy  to  get  a  share.  When  I  reflect  on  the 
unstained  virtue  and  nobility  of  the  great  majority  of  working 
girls  whom  I  have  known,  I  feel  the  deepest  respect  for  them. 
But  some  are  always  on  the  edge  of  danger.  As  the  crocodile 
takes  toll  of  the  Hindu  women  at  the  river  ford,  so  every  now 
and  then  one  of  the  girls  throws  up  her  hands  and  goes  under. 
Those  who  are  strong  by  personal  vigor,  or  by  religious  train- 
ing, can  escape,  and  blessed  is  he  who  strengthens  their 
hands.  But  that  does  not  satisfy  the  situation.  If  a  ship 
were  wrecked  and  the  passengers  clinging  to  the  tilted  deck, 
the  strongest  would  hold  on  best.  If  some  one  cheered  their 
failing  strength  and  showed  them  how  best  to  cling,  it  would 
be  a  great  service.     But  if  the  deck  kept  on  tilting  at  a 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  279 

steeper  angle,  more  still  would  go.  There  are  employers  in 
European  cities  who  expect  as  a  matter  of  course  that  their 
female  clerks  will  give  them  more  than  the  working  capacity 
of  their  bodies.  There  are  stores  in  New  York  and  else- 
where where  some  girls  get  the  easy  positions  and  some  are 
made  uncomfortable  for  reasons  well  understood.  That 
sort  of  oppression  will  be  successful  in  the  measure  in 
which  the  girls  fear  to  lose  their  positions.  Woe  to  the 
weak !  They  are  like  birds  fluttering  in  the  hot  hand  of 
the  pursuer.  The  most  serious  danger  is  not  the  increase  of 
professional  prostitutes,  but  the  frequency  with  which  women 
supplement  their  wages  and  secure  their  pleasures  by  occa- 
sional immorality.  Prostitutes  are  ostracized  by  their  class. 
It  is  worse  if  girls  are  tainted,  but  retain  their  standing  and 
spread  the  contagion.  The  freedom  of  movement  in  Ameri- 
can life  and  the  growing  knowledge  of  preventives  makes 
sin  easy  and  safe.  To  any  one  who  realizes  the  value  of 
womanly  purity,  it  is  appalling  to  think  that  the  standard 
of  purity  for  their  whole  sex  may  drop  and  approximate  the 
standard  prevailing  among  men. 

The  health  of  society  rests  on  the  welfare  of  the  home.         / 
What,  then,  will  be  the  outcome  if  the  unmarried  multiply;  if 
homes  remain  childless ;  if  families  are  homeless ;  if  girls  do 
not  know  housework ;  and  if  men  come  to  distrust  the  purity 
of  women? 

The  continents  are  strewn  with  the  ruins  of  dead  nations  The  fall  or 
and  civilizations.     History  laughs  at  the  optimistic  illusion  christfan 
that  "nothing  can  stand  in  the  way  of  human  progress."     It  civilization, 
would  be  safer  to  assert  that  progress  is  always  for  a  time  only, 
and  then  succumbs  to  the  inevitable  decay.     One  by  one 


28o  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  ancient  peoples  rose  to  wealth  and  civilization,  extended 
their  sway  as  far  as  geographical  conditions  would  permit, 
and  then  began  to  decay  within  and  to  crumble  away  with- 
out, until  the  mausoleums  of  their  kings  were  the  haunt  of 
jackals,  and  the  descendants  of  their  conquering  warriors 
were  abject  peasants  slaving  for  some  alien  lord.  What 
guarantee  have  we,  then,  that  our  modem  civilization  with  its 
pomp  will  not  be  "one  with  Nineveh  and  Tyre"  ? 

The  most  important  question  which  humanity  ought  to 
address  to  its  historical  scholars  is  this:  "Why  did  these 
others  die,  and  what  can  we  do  to  escape  their  fate?"  For 
death  is  not  an  inevitable  and  welcome  necessity  for  a  nation, 
as  it  is  for  the  individual.  Its  strength  and  bloom  could  be 
indefinitely  prolonged  if  the  people  were  wise  and  just  enough 
to  avert  the  causes  of  decay.  There  is  no  inherent  cause  why 
a  great  group  of  nations,  such  as  that  which  is  now  united 
in  Western  civilization,  should  not  live  on  in  perpetual  youth, 
overcoming  by  a  series  of  rejuvenations  every  social  evil  as 
it  arises,  and  using  every  attainment  as  a  stepping-stone  to  a 
still  higher  culture  of  individual  and  social  life.  It  has  never 
yet  been  done.  Can  it  be  done  in  a  civilization  in  which 
Christianity  is  the  salt  of  the  earth,  the  social  preservative? 

Of  all  the  other  dead  civilizations  we  have  only  scattered 
relics  and  fragmentary  information,  as  of  some  fossil  creature 
of  a  past  geological  era.  We  can  only  guess  at  their  fate. 
But  the  rise  and  fall  of  one  happened  in  the  full  light  of  day, 
and  we  have  historical  material  enough  to  watch  every  step 
of  the  process.  That  was  the  Graeco-Roman  civilization 
which  clustered  about  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 

Its  golden  age,  which  immediately  preceded  its  rapid  de- 
cline, had  a  striking  resemblance  to  our  own  time.     In  both 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  281 

cases  there  was  a  swift  increase  in  wealth.  The  Empire 
policed  the  seas  and  built  roads.  The  safety  of  commerce 
and  the  ease  of  travel  and  transportation  did  for  the  Empire 
what  steam  transportation  did  for  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  mass  of  slaves  secured  by  the  wars  of  conquest,  and 
organized  for  production  in  the  factories  and  on  the  great 
estates,  furnished  that  increase  in  cheap  productive  force 
which  the  invention  of  steam  machinery  and  the  division  and 
organization  of  labor  furnished  to  the  modem  world.  No 
new  civilization  was  created  by  these  improved  conditions; 
but  the  forces  latent  in  existing  civilization  were  stimulated 
and  set  free,  and  their  application  resulted  in  a  rapid  efflo- 
rescence of  the  economic  and  intellectual  life.  Just  as  the 
nations  about  the  Seven  Seas  are  drawing  together  to-day 
and  are  sharing  their  spiritual  possessions  in  a  common  civili- 
zation, so  the  Empire  broke  down  the  barriers  of  the  nations 
about  the  Mediterranean,  gathered  them  in  a  certain  unity 
of  life,  and  poured  their  capacities  and  thoughts  into  a  com- 
mon fund.  The  result  was  a  breakdown  of  the  old  faiths 
and  a  wonderful  fertilization  of  intellectual  life. 

Wealth  —  to  use  a  homely  illustration  —  is  to  a  nation 
what  manure  is  to  a  farm.  If  the  farmer  spreads  it  evenly 
over  the  soil,  it  will  enrich  the  whole.  If  he  should  leave  it 
in  heaps,  the  land  would  be  impoverished  and  under  the  rich 
heaps  the  vegetation  would  be  killed. 

The  new  wealth  created  in  the  Roman  Empire  was  not 
justly  distributed,  but  fell  a  prey  to  a  minority  who  were  in 
a  position  to  seize  it.  A  new  money  aristocracy  arose  which 
financed  the  commercial  undertakings  and  shouldered  the 
old  aristocratic  families  aside,  just  as  the  feudal  aristocracies 
were  superseded  in  consequence  of  the  modem  industrial 


282  CHRISTIANITY   AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

revolution.  A  few  gained  immense  wealth,  while  below 
them  was  a  mass  of  slaves  and  free  proletarians.  The  in- 
dependent middle  class  disappeared.  The  cities  grew  ab- 
normally at  the  expense  of  the  country  and  its  sturdy  popu- 
lation. Great  fortunes  were  made  and  yet  there  was  constant 
distress  and  frequent  hard  times.  The  poor  had  no  rights 
in  the  means  of  production,  so  they  used  the  political  power 
still  remaining  to  them  to  secure  state  grants  of  land,  money, 
grain,  and  pleasures.  There  was  widespread  reluctance  to 
marry  and  to  rear  children.  Education  became  common,  and 
yet  culture  declined.  There  were  plenty  of  universities,  great 
libraries,  well-paid  professors,  and  yet  a  growing  coarseness 
of  taste  and  a  decline  in  creative  artistic  and  literary  ability. 
If  the  yellow  newspaper  could  have  been  printed,  it  would 
have  "filled  a  long-felt  want."  The  social  conditions  in- 
volved a  readjustment  of  political  power.  A  strong  cen- 
tralized government  was  necessary  to  keep  the  provinces 
quiet  while  Rome  taxed  them  and  the  bureaucracy  grew  rich 
on  them.  Government  was  not  based  broadly  on  the  just 
consent  of  the  governed,  but  on  the  swords  of  the  legions, 
and  especially  of  the  praetorian  guard.  The  old  republican 
forms  were  long  maintained,  but  Rome  verged  more  and 
more  toward  despotic  autocracy. 

In  a  hundred  ways  the  second  century  of  our  era  seemed 
to  be  the  splendid  culmination  of  all  the  past.  The  Empire 
seemed  imperishable  in  the  glory  of  almost  a  thousand  years 
of  power.  To  prophesy  its  fall  would  have  seemed  like  pre- 
dicting the  failure  of  civilization  and  humanity.  The  re- 
verses which  began  with  the  death  of  Marcus  Aurelius  in 
A.D.  180  seemed  mere  temporary  misfortunes.  Yet  they 
were  the  beginning  of  the  end. 


THE   PRESENT  CRISIS  283 

The  German  and  Celtic  tribes  had  long  swiried  and  eddied 
about  the  northern  boundary  of  the  Empire,  like  the  ocean 
about  the  dikes  of  Holland.  The  little  Rome  of  Marius  a 
hundred  years  before  Christ  had  successfully  beaten  back 
the  Cimbrians  and  Teutons.  For  two  centuries  the  strong 
arm  of  the  legions  had  dammed  the  flood  behind  the  Rhine 
and  Danube.  Rome  was  so  much  superior  in  numbers,  in 
wealth,  in  the  science  of  war  and  all  the  resources  of  civiliza- 
tion, that  it  might  have  continued  to  hold  them  in  check  and 
to  turn  their  forward  movements  in  other  directions.  But 
the  decay  at  the  centre  now  w^eakened  the  capacity  for  re- 
sistance at  the  borders.  The  farmers  who  had  made  the 
legions  of  the  Republic  invincible  had  been  ruined  by  the 
competition  of  slave  labor,  crowded  out  by  land  monopoly, 
and  sucked  into  the  ragged  proletariat  of  the  cities.  The 
armies  had  to  be  recruited  from  the  conquered  provinces  and 
finally  from  barbarian  mercenaries.  The  moral  enthusiasm 
of  a  citizen  soldiery  fighting  for  their  homes  was  gone.  The 
impoverished  and  overtaxed  provinces  were  unable  to  re- 
spond to  additional  financial  needs.  Slowly  the  barbarians 
filtered  into  the  Northern  provinces  by  mass  immigration. 
The  civilized  population  did  not  have  vitality  enough  to 
assimilate  the  foreign  immigrants.  Slowly,  by  gradual 
stages,  hardly  fast  enough  for  men  to  realize  what  was  going 
on,  the  ancient  civilization  retreated,  and  the  flood  of  bar- 
barism covered  the  provinces,  with  only  some  islands  of 
culture  rising  above  the  yellow  flood. 

And  how  will  it  be  with  us  ?  Will  that  vaster  civilization 
which  began  in  Europe  and  is  now  spreading  along  the 
shores  of  all  the  oceans,  as  Rome  grew  from  Italy  outward 
around  the  great  inland  sea,  run  through  the  same  stages? 


284  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

If  the  time  of  our  weakness  comes,  the  barbarians  will  not 
be  wanting  to  take  possession.  Where  the  carcass  is,  the 
vultures  will  gather. 
^  Nations  do  not  die  by  wealth,  but  by  injustice.  The  for- 
ward impetus  comes  through  some  great  historical  oppor- 
tunity which  stimulates  the  production  of  wealth,  breaks  up 
the  caked  and  rigid  order  of  the  past,  sets  free  the  energies 
of  new  classes,  calls  creative  leaders  to  the  front,  quickens 
the  intellectual  life,  intensifies  the  sense  of  duty  and  the  ideal 
devotion  to  the  common  weal,  and  awakens  in  the  strong 
individuals  the  large  ambition  of  patriotic  service.  Progress 
slackens  when  a  single  class  appropriates  the  social  results 
of  the  common  labor,  fortifies  its  evil  rights  by  unfair  laws, 
throttles  the  masses  by  political  centralization  and  suppres- 
sion, and  consumes  in  luxury  what  it  has  taken  in  covetous- 
ness.  Then  there  is  a  gradual  loss  of  productive  energy,  an 
increasing  bitterness  and  distrust,  a  waning  sense  of  duty 
and  devotion  to  country,  a  paralysis  of  the  moral  springs  of 
^  noble  action.  Men  no  longer  love  the  Commonwealth,  be- 
cause it  does  not  stand  for  the  common  wealth.  Force  has 
to  supply  the  cohesive  power  which  love  fails  to  furnish.  Ex- 
ploitation creates  poverty,  and  poverty  is  followed  by  physical 
degeneration.  Education,  art,  wealth,  and  culture  may  con- 
tinue to  advance  and  may  even  ripen  to  their  mellowest 
perfection  when  the  worm  of  death  is  already  at  the  heart 
of  the  nation.  Internal  convulsions  or  external  catastrophes 
will  finally  reveal  the  state  of  decay. 

It  is  always  a  process  extending  through  generations  or 
even  centuries.  It  is  possible  that  with  the  closely  knit 
nations  of  the  present  era  the  resistive  vitality  is  greater  than 
in  former  ages,  and  it  will  take  much  longer  for  them  to  break 


THE   PRESENT   CRISIS  285 

up.  The  mobility  of  modem  intellectual  life  will  make  it 
harder  for  the  stagnation  of  mind  and  the  crystallization  of 
institutions  to  make  headway.  But  unless  the  causes  of 
social  wrong  are  removed,  it  will  be  a  slow  process  of  stran- 
<5ulation  and  asphyxiation. 

In  the  last  resort  the  only  hope  is  in  the  moral  forces  which 
can  be  summoned  to  the  rescue.  If  there  are  statesmen, 
prophets,  and  apostles  who  set  truth  and  justice  above  selfish  .^^ 
advancement;  if  their  call  finds  a  response  in  the  great  ^ 
body  of  the  people ;  if  a  new  tide  of  religious  faith  and  moral 
enthusiasm  creates  new  standards  of  duty  and  a  new  capacity 
for  self-sacrifice ;  if  the  strong  learn  to  direct  their  love  of 
power  to  the  uplifting  of  the  people  and  see  the  highest  self- 
assertion  in  self-sacrifice  —  then  the  intrenchments  of  vested 
wrong  will  melt  away;  the  stifled  energy  of  the  people  will 
leap  forward ;  the  atrophied  members  of  the  social  body  will 
be  filled  with  a  fresh  flow  of  blood ;  and  a  regenerate  nation 
will  look  with  the  eyes  of  youth  across  the  fields  of  the  future. 

The  cry  of  "Crisis!  crisis!"  has  become  a  weariness. 
Every  age  and  every  year  are  critical  and  fraught  with 
destiny.  Yet  in  the  widest  survey  of  history  Western  civili- 
zation is  now  at  a  decisive  point  in  its  development. 

Will  some  Gibbon  of  Mongol  race  sit  by  the  shore  of  the 
Pacific  in  the  year  a.d.  3000  and  write  on  the  "Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Christian  Empire"?  If  so,  he  will  probably  de- 
scribe the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries  as  the  golden 
age  when  outwardly  life  flourished  as  never  before,  but  when 
that  decay,  which  resulted  in  the  gradual  collapse  of  the 
twenty-first  and  twenty-second  centuries,  was  already  far 
advanced. 

Or  will  the  twentieth  century  mark  for  the  future  historian 


286  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  real  adolescence  of  humanity,  the  great  emancipation 
from  barbarism  and  from  the  paralysis  of  injustice,  and  the 
beginning  of  a  progress  in  the  intellectual,  social,  and  moral 
life  of  mankind  to  which  all  past  history  has  no  parallel  ? 

It  will  depend  almost  wholly  on  the  moral  forces  which 
the  Christian  nations  can  bring  to  the  fighting  line  against 
wrong,  and  the  fighting  energy  of  those  moral  forces  will 
again  depend  on  the  degree  to  which  they  are  inspired  by 
religious  faith  and  enthusiasm.  It  is  either  a  revival  of  social 
religion  or  the  deluge. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   STAKE   OF   THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT 

The  demoralization  of  society  which  we  have  tried  to  bring 
before  us  in  the  preceding  chapter  ought  to  appeal  most 
powerfully  to  the  Church,  for  the  Church  is  to  be  the  incar- 
nation of  the  Christ-spirit  on  earth,  the  organized  conscience 
of  Christendom.  It  should  be  swiftest  to  awaken  to  every 
undeserved  suffering,  bravest  to  speak  against  every  wrong, 
and  strongest  to  rally  the  moral  forces  of  the  community 
against  everything  that  threatens  the  better  life  among  men. 

But  in  addition  to  the  call  of  unselfish  duty,  the  Church 
may  well  hear  in  the  present  crisis  the  voice  of  warning  to  it 
to  guard  its  own  interests.  The  organized  Church  is  a  great 
social  institution,  deeply  rooted  in  the  common  life  of  hu- 
manity, and  if  all  other  human  life  about  it  suffers  through 
some  permanent  evil,  the  Church  is  bound  to  suffer  with  it. 
It  holds  property ;  it  needs  income ;  it  employs  men.  There- 
fore whatever  affects  property  and  employment  will  affect  the 
Church.  Its  work  is  done  on  human  material;  anything 
which  deteriorates  that  material,  impedes  the  work  of  the 
Church.  The  warning  of  justifiable  self-interest  runs  in  the 
same  direction  with  the  call  to  duty  and  each  reenforces  the 
other.^ 

In  this  chapter  I  propose  to  set  forth  this  aspect  of  the 

*  An  article  in  which  I  set  forth  this  Hne  of  thought  in  more  rudimentary 
form  was  published  in  the  American  Journal  oj  Sociology,  July,  1897. 

287 


288  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

situation.  It  is  not  the  highest  line  of  appeal,  but  it  well 
deserves  consideration,  not  only  by  those  whose  professional 
interests  are  bound  up  with  the  Church,  but  by  all  who  believe 
that  the  Church  propagates  and  perpetuates  the  religious 
life,  and  that  its  vitality  is  of  importance  to  the  higher  life  of 
humanity. 

The  Church       The  ChuFch  is  a  large  landowner.     As  soon  as  it  gets 
estate^  beyond  its  first  itinerant  stage,  it  needs  a  permanent  foot- 

hold on  the  land.  Every  enlargement  of  church  work,  every 
mission  or  parish-house,  requires  land.  If  land  is  cheap, 
church  expansion  is  easy.  If  land  prices  are  artificially  high, 
expansion  is  checked.  Land  speculation,  which  checks  and 
strangles  every  other  business,  hampers  the  Church  too. 

The  retarding  influence  of  land  prices  is  felt  most  in  the 
founding  of  missions  and  young  churches.  It  is  a  frost  that 
nips  the  young  shoots.  A  young  church  enterprise  is  usually 
feeble  in  its  finances.  If  it  has  to  pay  a  prohibitive  price 
for  a  mere  location,  that  may  cripple  it  or  frustrate  it  alto- 
gether. 

Now,  land  prices  are  highest  where  population  is  densest. 
Consequently  it  is  harder  to  plant  new  churches  in  large 
cities  than  in  small.  A  hundred  working  people  in  a  small 
town  might  easily  unite  in  buying  a  lot  for  $1000.  The  same 
hundred  persons,  if  living  in  New  York,  might  have  to  pay 
$10,000  for  a  lot  of  half  the  size.  But  the  denser  the  popula- 
tion, the  more  unwholesome  are  the  moral  influences  and  the 
greater  is  the  need  of  religious  work.  Thus  land  prices  act 
as  an  automatic  brake  on  church  extension,  and  this  brake 
presses  the  harder,  the  steeper  the  uphill  grade  is  which  the 
Church  has  to  climb.     This  is  one  simple  explanation  of  the 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  289 

fact  SO  often  lamented,  that  the  Church  does  not  keep  pace 
with  the  population  in  large  cities.  A  certain  church  in  New 
York  fifty  years  ago  planted  a  number  of  missions  in  the 
growing  suburbs  of  that  day  by  holding  cottage  meetings  in 
the  homes  of  its  members  and  renting  vacant  stores  in  which 
it  organized  Sunday-schools.  Several  of  these  missions  de- 
veloped into  vigorous  churches.  Forty  years  later  the  same 
church  desired  to  resume  its  early  missionary  career,  but  its 
members  now  lived  in  tenement  houses,  and  the  cheapest 
store  in  sight  cost  $600  a  year.  It  was  numerically  and 
financially  stronger  than  in  its  early  days,  but  rent  had  in- 
creased faster  than  the  ability  of  the  church,  and  high  rent 
quenched  its  missionary  impulse.  The  pioneer  work  which 
formerly  rested  on  the  spontaneous  zeal  of  plain  people 
becomes  dependent  on  the  assistance  of  wealthy  individuals 
or  city  mission  organizations.  That  conduces  to  prudence, 
and  also  to  officialism. 

Of  course  single  churches  may  profit  by  the  land  system 
which  hampers  the  Church  at  large.  A  church  occasionally 
sells  its  old  site  at  an  enormous  increase  and  builds  luxuriously 
in  a  new  neighborhood  on  the  proceeds.  Several  denomina- 
tions in  New  York  City  are  forging  ahead  of  others,  not 
simply  by  superior  spiritual  efficiency,  but  because  they  have 
long  had  an  endowment  in  city  land  and  are  able  to  feed  their 
religious  work  with  the  "  unearned  increment"  created  by  the 
community.  In  general  our  land  system  works  against  the 
great  majority  of  churches  which  have  to  live  from  hand  to 
mouth.  It  has  long  seemed  to  me  that  the  land-tax  system 
advocated  by  Henry  George  would  create  almost  ideal  con- 
ditions for  the  ordinary  church.  A  church  would  then  pay  an 
annual  rental  or  tax  on  the  site  occupied,  just  as  if  it  occupied 


W 


290  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

land  under  a  perpetual  lease.  It  would  not  have  to  raise  a 
large  sum  for  the  initial  purchase  of  the  land,  but  could  devote 
its  available  capital  to  the  church  edifice,  and  hope  to  pay  its 
annual  land-tax  from  its  current  income,  just  as  it  now  pays 
interest  on  the  church  debt. 

The  needs  of  modem  industry  shift  and  change  the  popula- 
tion. They  denude  the  country  and  gather  the  people  about 
the  shops  and  mines.  They  invade  a  residence  neighborhood 
with  factories,  scatter  the  old  population,  and  fill  the  chinks 
between  the  shops  and  warehouses  with  a  population  of  lower 
grade,  and  perhaps  of  alien  faith  and  tongue.  This  affects 
the  churches  profoundly.  Fine  old  country  churches  are 
left  high  and  dry.  When  a  trust  transfers  a  shop  to  another 
city,  some  church  may  be  left  behind,  like  Rachel,  mourning 
for  her  children.  Protestant  churches  wake  up  and  find 
themselves  in  an  Italian  or  Jewish  neighborhood.  All  the 
endless  labor  and  love  which  pastor  and  people  put  into  the 
erection  of  a  new  church  home  may  serve  only  for  a  few  years, 
and  then  the  location  will  have  to  be  abandoned  and  the 
edifice  sold  for  second-hand  building  material.  The  inter- 
est of  the  Church  is  in  stability  of  population.  A  permanent 
location  builds  up  an  invaluable  *' good-will."  People  come 
to  love  the  local  church  for  the  memories  and  traditions  which 
cling  about  it  and  make  it  more  beautiful  than  the  ivy  on  its 
walls.  Churches  are  long-lived  organisms,  like  trees,  and 
strike  their  roots  deeper  with  the  passing  years.  When  a 
speculative  and  frantic  commerce  hustles  the  churches 
around,  they  owe  it  no  thanks. 

Competitive  industry  sweeps  the  people  together  in  the  great 
cities.  Therewith  it  creates  the  problem  of  the  down-town 
church.     In  a  community  of  moderate  diameter  the  people 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    SOCIAL    MOVEMENT  29I 

on  the  outskirts  can  easily  reach  a  church  built  in  the  centre. 
When  a  city  grows  very  large,  the  outer  fringe  of  homes  drifts 
ever  farther  away  from  the  ancient  churches  that  stand  in 
heroic  loneliness  like  the  Roman  soldier  dying  on  guard  at 
Pompeii.  Their  problem  is  aggravated  by  land  speculation, 
which  usually  lays  a  belt  of  sparsely  settled  land  about  the 
city  and  compels  home-seekers  to  cross  that  belt  to  nuclei  of 
social  life  still  farther  out. 

These  brief  suggestions  will  suffice  to  show  that  at  the 
bottom  of  some  of  the  gravest  problems  that  harass  churches 
and  pastors  lies  the  land  question  in  its  relation  to  the  com- 
plex total  of  modem  life.  The  condition  of  the  crowded  and 
landless  people  ought  long  ago  to  have  aroused  the  Church  to 
examine  the  moral  basis  of  our  land  system.  Let  it  realize 
in  addition  that  its  own  growth  and  stabihty  is  impaired  by 
the  same  causes. 

The  income  of  the  Church  in  former  times  and  in  other  The  Church 
countries  was  mainly  derived  from  landed  wealth  or  from  come^  ^°' 
state  subsidies.     In  our  country  the  churches  with  few  excep- 
tions are  maintained  by  the  current  contributions  of  their  V 
living  members.     It  is  therefore  of  the  utmost  importance  to 
the  financial  welfare  of  the  churches  that  their  members 
shall  have  a  regular  and  secure  income,  from  which  they 
can  readily  support  their  church.     Thus  the  Church  has  the 
greatest  possible  interest  in  a  just  and  even  distribution  of            V 
wealth.     The  best  community  for  church  support  at  present 
is  a  comfortable  middle-class  neighborhood.     A  social  sys- 
tem which  would    make    moderate    wealth    approximately 
universal  would  be  the  best  soil  for  robust  churches.     If,  on 
the  contrary,  society  tends  to  divide  into  a  few  rich  families 


292 


CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 


and  a  mass  of  poor  wage-earners,  the  troubles  of  the  Church 
are  before  it. 

We  all  understand  that  a  man  receiving  $500  a  year  cannot 
pay  as  much  to  religious  institutions  as  a  man  receiving  $5000, 
but  the  universal  impression  seems  to  be  that  he  can  fairly  be 
expected  to  contribute  the  same  proportion  of  his  income. 
The  Old  Testament  law  of  tithing  is  very  generally  recom- 
mended as  the  ideal  to  be  followed  by  all,  on  the  supposition 
that  ten  per  cent  of  an  income  of  $500  is  the  same  proportion 
as  ten  per  cent  of  an  income  of  $5000.  This  commercial 
method  of  calculation  leaves  some  fundamental  facts  of 
human  nature  out  of  account  and  has  inflicted  a  grave  wrong 
on  the  poorer  portion  of  our  churches.  Dr.  Ernst  Engel,  long 
the  eminent  chief  of  the  Prussian  Bureau  of  Statistics,  com- 
piled from  a  large  number  of  family  budgets  the  propor- 
tion expended  for  various  purposes.  The  following  table  * 
contains  the  main  results :  — 


Percentage  of  the  Expenditure  of  a 

Item  of  Expenditures 

Family  with  an  Income  of 

$225-8300 

$45o-$6oo 

$750-$ I 100 

a  year 

a  year 

a  year 

I.  Subsistence 

62.0%] 

55-o%l 

50.0%  1 

2.  Clothing 

3.  Lodging 

16.0% 
12.0% 

►95% 

18.0% 
12.0% 

90% 

18.0% 
12.0% 

85% 

4.  Firing  and  lighting 

S-o%J 

5-o%J 

5-o%J 

5.  Education,  worship,  etc. 

2.0%] 

3-5%] 

5-5%] 

6.  Legal  protection 

1.0% 

2.0% 

3-o% 

7.  Care  of  health 

1.0% 

5% 

2.0% 

.  10% 

3.0% 

fi5% 

8.  Comfort,  mental  and 

bodily  recreation 

1.0%. 

2.5%  J 

3-5%  J 

1  Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor,  1885.  Dr. 
R.  T.  Ely  has  a  brief  discussion  of  the  table  in  his  "Outlines  of  Eco- 
nomics," pp.  243-245. 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  293 

The  minor  items  of  this  table  will  vary  somewhat  in  dif- 
ferent countries,  according  to  local  prices  and  customs;  but 
the  main  deduction,  which  is  known  in  Political  Economy  as 
"Engel's  Law  of  Consumption,"  is  as  universal  as  human  v  ^ 
nature.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  first  four  items  include 
those  expenditures  which  satisfy  the  animal  necessities  of 
the  body :  food,  shelter,  and  warmth.  The  other  four  satisfy 
the  higher  needs.  As  the  income  rises,  the  proportion  spent 
on  the  first  group  sinks,  and  the  proportion  spent  on  the 
second  group  rises.  Within  the  first  group  the  proportion 
spent  for  lodging,  heat,  and  light  is  the  same  in  all  classes, 
and  the  proportion  for  clothing  nearly  so.  But  the  propor- 
tion spent  for  food  is  far  larger  with  the  poorest  families. 
The  human  body  has  certain  imperious  demands  for  its 
maintenance,  and  these  demands  cannot  be  compressed  be- 
low a  certain  minimum.  If  the  income  is  small,  the  largest 
part  must  go  simply  for  stoking  the  human  machine,  and  the 
higher  needs  of  the  social,  intellectual,  and  religious  nature 
must  be  starved.  If  food  prices  rise,  that  proportion  will 
be  still  greater.  The  nearer  the  people  descend  toward 
the  poverty  line,  the  less  will  be  available  for  the  higher 
wants. 

If,  then,  any  average  wage-earner  in  the  churches  has 
actually  given  a  tenth  of  his  income,  he  deserves  profound 
respect.  It  is  heroic  giving  for  him.  And  if  we  have  al- 
lowed the  impression  to  prevail  that  the  giving  of  one-tenth 
by  all  was  equal  giving  for  all,  we  have  unwittingly  inflicted 
a  grievous  injustice  on  the  poorer  church  members. 

In  every  church  working  among  the  poorer  classes  there  are 
a  number  who  contribute  nothing  or  are  dependents  of  the 
church  instead  of  supporters.     Every  season  of  economic 


294  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

distress  depresses  additional  families  below  this  line.  But 
some  self-respecting  people  may  choose  a  different  line  of 
action.  If  their  church  membership  involves  too  heavy  a 
tax,  they  drop  away.  Other  causes  and  motives  may  work 
in  the  same  direction,  but  the  pressure  exerted  by  the  sys- 
tematized giving  of  the  modem  church,  and  the  insistence 
on  this  virtue  in  pulpit  teaching,  must  alienate  some.  They 
simply  cannot  afford  church  life.  The  fraternal  societies, 
which  offer  insurance  and  mutual  help  in  sickness  and  death, 
have  increased  immensely  among  the  wage-earners,  while  the 
Church  confessedly  has  lost  ground  among  them.  Is  this 
due  merely  to  religious  indifference  and  unbehef,  or  to 
poverty  coupled  with  self-respect? 

I  am  not  in  a  position  to  prove  this,  but  I  oflFer  it  as  a 
working  hypothesis  to  explain  in  part  the  alienation  of  the 
working  classes  from  the  churches.  Certainly  the  churches 
are  deeply  affected  by  the  economic  pressure  resting  on  the 
wage-workers.  Engel's  Law  deserves  serious  consideration 
from  the  point  of  view  of  church  finances.  I  have  never  come 
across  any  discussion  of  it  nor  any  indication  that  it  is  under- 
stood in  its  bearings  on  church  life. 

If  the  people  become  poor,  they  cannot  afford  to  share  in 
a  self-supporting  church.  The  unequal  distribution  of  wealth 
thus  tends  to  strip  the  churches  of  their  poorer  clientage. 
The  same  inequality  of  wealth  threatens  the  churches  in  other 
ways  on  the  side  of  the  strong  who  profit  by  it. 

If  a  church  is  composed  of  many  wage-workers  with  a  few 
well-to-do  families,  the  contributions  of  these  few  will  be  of 
inordinate  importance  in  the  financial  affairs  of  the  church. 
The  departure  of  a  single  family  may  mean  that  the  church 
can  no  longer  pay  the  minister's  salary  nor  support  itself. 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  295 

Such  a  condition  will  almost  inevitably  breed  an  unwhole- 
some deference  at  some  points  and  an  unwholesome  jealousy 
at  others.  It  would  be  strange,  too,  if  those  who  are  the 
financial  stays  of  the  church  did  not  have  the  feeling  that  their 
wishes  ought  to  be  decisive  about  the  coming  and  going  of 
the  minister  and  other  matters  deeply  affecting  the  spiritual 
life.  But  the  preference  of  wealthy  men  and  their  wives 
may  select  a  pastor  who  is  more  of  a  courtier  than  a  saint. 
The  fundamental  evil  in  the  imion  of  Church  and  State  is 
that  worldly  men  with  their  interests  and  points  of  view 
dominate  the  life  of  the  Church  which  ought  to  be  guided  by 
moral  and  Christian  interests.  The  point  of  contact  between 
the  Church  and  the  State  was  frequently  the  local  nobleman, 
who  had  the  right  of  "patronage"  and  could  "present  the 
living"  to  some  candidate  of  his  own  selection.  It  was  this 
which  caused  the  Disruption  of  the  Church  of  Scotland 
in  1843.  Church  and  State  are  separate  with  us,  but  the 
essence  of  the  evil  may  creep  in  once  more  as  soon  as  the  mass 
of  church  members  are  financially  weak  and  a  few  persons 
hold  the  financial  existence  of  the  church  in  their  hands. 
Church  democracy  and  voluntaryism  presuppose  approxi- 
mate financial  equality. 

The  danger  just  described  has  been  averted  usually  by  the 
fact  that  in  the  larger  cities,  where  there  is  more  than  one 
church  of  a  denomination,  the  wealthier  families  do  not 
remain  in  the  poorer  churches,  but  gravitate  toward  churches 
composed  in  the  main  of  their  own  class.  Water  seeks  its 
level  and  so  do  men.  If  a  young  man  rises  to  wealth,  and  if 
he  and  his  wife  have  social  ambitions,  or  if  they  have  intel- 
lectual and  aesthetic  tastes,  the  wealthy  church  attracts  them. 
If  a  man  from  Christian  motives  remains  in  a  church  of  poorer 


296  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

people  and  bears  its  burdens,  he  may  find  that  undesirable 
associations  threaten  his  growing  children  there.  There  are 
a  hundred  perfectly  natural  and  legitimate  reasons  to  rec- 
ommend a  transfer  of  membership  to  the  more  congenial 
surroundings.  As  fast  as  the  social  extremes  draw  apart  and 
society  stratifies  in  classes,  the  churches  will  pass  through  the 
same  process.  The  very  democracy  of  our  intercourse  in 
America  makes  it  the  more  inevitable. 

But  this  situation  creates  the  same  problem  of  dependence 
on  a  larger  scale.  The  poorer  churches  become  financially 
dependent  on  those  which  contain  the  wealth  of  the  denomi- 
nation. If  a  small  church  becomes  a  "mission"  of  a  wealthy 
church,  it  thereby  secures  volunteer  workers  and  a  safe 
budget,  but  it  loses  its  independence  and  something  of  its 
virility.  If  a  city  mission  organization  undertakes  the  sup- 
port of  the  poorer  churches,  it  is  certain  to  draw  its  income 
chiefly  from  the  wealthy  churches,  and  the  situation  will  again 
be  essentially  the  same. 

The  inequality  of  wealth  affects  the  churches  on  a  still 
larger  scale.  Most  denominations  have  a  few  very  wealthy 
supporters.  The  yearly  balance  of  the  great  denominational 
boards  and  institutions  may  depend  on  the  single-handed 
contributions  of  these  large  givers.  The  initiative  in  the 
larger  religious  enterprises  will  fall  to  them.  If  they  hitch 
their  steam-tug  to  the  denominational  canal-boat,  it  will 
float  away  to  a  prosperous  voyage;  if  they  hold  off,  it  will 
stick  on  the  mud-bank  of  poverty  and  all  the  poling  of  the 
crew  may  not  get  it  afloat.  They  may,  and  often  do,  use 
their  vast  powers  very  wisely  to  develop  the  latent  resources 
of  their  denomination.  But  it  is  at  least  conceivable  that  men 
whose  character  has  been  moulded  by  commercialism,  may  be 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    SOCIAL    MOVEMENT  297 

guided  by  points  of  view  very  alien  from  the  Christian  spirit, 
and  that  personal  dislikes  or  class  prejudices  may  decide 
questions  of  the  greatest  spiritual  importance.  Thus  the 
mere  fact  of  great  inequality  of  wealth  injects  a  monarchi- 
cal element  into  denominations  with  democratic  government, 
and  in  bodies  with  episcopal  government  it  creates  a  financial 
episcopacy  back  of  the  bishops. 

Then  there  is  always  the  danger  of  change.  The  rich  man 
may  grow  weary  of  the  constant  demands  on  his  help  and  the 
disheartening  experiences  of  untruthfulness  and  parasitism 
which  he  is  bound  to  make,  and  may  slacken  in  his  giving. 
It  is  not  as  delightful  to  be  a  god  on  a  small  scale  as  outsiders 
think.  Or  the  children  of  the  rich  man  may  be  debilitated 
by  the  atmosphere  of  wealth  and  be  more  interested  in  or- 
chids or  art  curios  than  in  the  Church  their  father  and  mother 
loved  so  well.  Or  they  may  follow  the  drift  of  their  social 
set  toward  the  ritualistic  churches,  which  offer  more  aes- 
thetic satisfaction  and  bring  to  this  country  some  of  the  social 
prestige  and  antique  grandeur  which  they  have  in  older 
countries.  In  any  of  these  contingencies  the  revenues  of 
an  entire  denomination,  which  have  been  adjusted  to  these 
important  contributions,  may  be  upset  and  its  missionary 
policies  at  home  and  abroad  may  suffer  calamitous  retrench- 
ment. If  wealth  is  in  few  hands,  there  is  the  pleasant  pos- 
sibility of  very  large  and  swift  benefactions,  but  there  is  also 
a  constant  danger  of  instability.  The  safest  income  is  from 
the  moderately  wealthy. 

There  is  more  to  say,  but  this  will  suffice  to  show  that  the 
financial  welfare  of  the  churches  is  bound  up  with  the  eco- 
nomic health  of  society,  and  that  its  perils  increase  as  wealth 
accumulates  in  few  hands  and  the  social  extremes  draw 


298  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

farther  apart.  Moreover,  the  finances  of  the  Church  have 
always  affected  its  constitution  and  inner  Hfe  in  the  subtlest 
ways/  The  bishops  probably  rose  to  power  in  the  early 
Church  first  of  all  by  controlling  the  purse-strings  of  the 
churches.  One  cause  for  the  rise  of  the  papacy  was  the 
large  wealth  early  controlled  by  the  bishop  of  Rome.  The 
history  of  the  Church  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  its  struggles 
with  the  secular  powers  were  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
Church  was  a  great  landowner  and  fought  for  its  income. 
The  corruptions  of  the  papacy  and  its  financial  extortions, 
which  ahenated  the  Northern  nations  and  prepared  them 
for  the  schism  of  the  Reformation,  were  due  in  part  to  the 
economic  changes  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries. 
The  financial  necessities  of  the  Church  even  created  new 
sacramental  observances,  and  indirectly  the  doctrines  based 
on  them.  In  the  Reformation  financial  interests  played  a 
decisive  part  throughout.  The  democratic  polity  of  the  va- 
rious congregational  bodies,  which  is  most  in  harmony  with 
the  genius  of  American  life,  grew  up  in  homogeneous  bodies 
of  plain  people.  It  works  best  where  social  equahty  is 
greatest.  Its  essence  is  imperilled  as  soon  as  equality  de- 
parts. Financial  changes  are  apt  to  involve  far  more  than 
any  one  foresees  at  the  time.  When  financial  control  shifts, 
other  elements  and  functions  of  church  life  are  sure  to  shift 
with  it.  The  Church  surely  has  an  interest  at  stake  in  the 
distribution  of  social  wealth.^ 

^  See  an  article  by  Professor  Harnack  in  the  Contemporary  Review, 
1904,  p.  846,  on  "The  Relation  between  Ecclesiastical  and  General  His- 
tory." 

^  On  this  entire  subject  see  "The  Captive  City  of  God,"  by  my  friend 
Mr.  Richard  Heath,  a  book  written  with  searching  insight  and  prophetic 
power. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  299 

One  of  the  finest  results  of  our  free  church  hfe  is  that  it  has  The  volun- 
developed  the  resources  of  the  laity  and  has  offered  to  the  of  the 
ordinary  members  the  opportunity  to  express  their  Christian  Church, 
life  in  Christian  work.     The  American  conception  of  a  church 
is  not  to  have  an  active  priest  or  minister  with  a  passive 
people.     All  recent  movements  in  church  organization,  for 
instance    the    Endeavor   Societies   and  Men's  Clubs,  have 
tended  to  draw  new  groups  of  the  membership  into  active 
participation    in    church    work.     Church    work    has    been      '^ 
laicized.      The  instinct  of  the  leaders  of  these  movements 
has  been  entirely  right.     In  our  schools  we  have  learned  that 
a  child  profits  not  by  what  is  said  to  it  by  the  teacher,  but  by 
what  it  says  and  does  itself.     In  the  volunteer  work  of  our 
churches  lies  their  chief  educational  value,  and  the  lay  workers 
are  the  main  reservoir  of  religious  strength. 

It  is,  then,  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  churches  to 
have  a  large  supply  of  intelligent  and  competent  men  and 
women,  who  have  a  margin  of  leisure  time  and  a  reserve 
fund  of  physical  and  mental  strength  which  they  can  devote 
to  church  work.  If  these  volunteer  workers  labor  in  factories 
or  stores  all  week  for  long  hours,  at  a  rapid  pace,  and  under 
unwholesome  conditions,  they  cannot  bring  the  same  physical 
and  mental  elasticity  to  their  church  work.  While  youth  and 
health  last,  they  may  manage ;  but  when  age  approaches  or 
ill  health  drains  their  strength,  they  have  to  husband  their 
forces  for  the  task  of  getting  a  living.  They  will  henceforth 
come  to  church  to  be  cheered  and  helped,  and  can  no  longer 
put  forth  much  service.  If  a  young  woman  is  on  her  feet 
all  day  Saturday  till  late,  her  work  in  Sunday-school  must  be 
impaired  by  it.  Thus  the  churches  are  concerned  in  the 
hours  and  conditions  of  labor.  The  exhaustion  of  the  people 
drains  the  churches  of  their  workino-  force. 


300  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Christian  workers,  to  be  effective,  must  also  have  some 
measure  of  trained  intelligence,  managing  ability,  and  re- 
sourcefulness. Those  professions  which  develop  these 
qualities  furnish  the  ablest  church  workers.  The  business 
manager,  the  doctor,  the  school  principal,  make  the  ideal 
Sunday-school  superintendent  or  elder.  In  so  far  as  our 
industrial  life  deprives  the  ordinary  workers  of  all  oppor- 
tunity for  executive  planning  and  reduces  them  to  automatic 
parts  of  the  machinery,  it  fails  to  develop  their  latent  mental 
resources  and  thereby  stunts  their  possibilities  as  Christian 
workers.  Among  the  higher  classes  the  churches  can  lay 
hold  of  minds  trained  by  their  daily  work  and  press  them 
into  Christian  service.  Among  the  lower  classes  it  has  to 
take  minds  blunted  by  their  daily  work  and  itself  train  them. 
When  the  Church  descends  still  lower  in  the  social  scale,  it 
works  on  material  that  has  almost  no  capacity  for  service. 
There  the  work  falls  back  on  a  paid  staff  and  officialism  once 
more  reigns  in  religion. 

Thus  the  churches  have  an  interest  at  stake  in  the  pros- 
perity, physical  elasticity,  mental  efficiency,  and  leisure  time 
of  the  people.  As  the  modern  factory  and  tenement  stamp 
one  generation  after  the  other  with  the  proletarian  character, 
one  of  the  most  hopeful  tendencies  in  the  history  of  the  Church 
will  perforce  be  frustrated.  Volunteer  work  will  lessen,  and 
the  professional  worker  will  carry  the  burden  of  work  once 
more. 

The  supply  "Like  priest,  like  people."  The  condition  of  the  Church 
the  minis- °  depends  on  the  character  of  the  ministry,  and  the  condi- 
try-  tion  of  the  ministry  depends  on  the  social  health  of  the 

people. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  30I 

The  ministry  is  recruited  from  the  sons  of  the  middle  class, 
from  the  families  of  farmers,  small  business  men,  and  the 
better  grade  of  artisans.  Students  for  the  ministry  rarely 
come  from  the  homes  of  the  very  rich  or  the  very  poor.  The 
boys  of  the  poor  may  have  fine  native  ability  and  piety,  but 
if  they  are  early  forced  to  work,  their  educational  chances 
are  slighter  and  their  minds  are  likely  to  be  blunted.  The 
country  and  the  smaller  cities  furnish  a  larger  proportion  of 
the  supply  than  the  large  cities,  because  there  the  whole- 
some conditions  of  middle-class  life  persist  longer.  The  gen- 
eral shrinkage  in  the  supply,  which  seems  to  be  undeniable, 
is  doubtless  due  to  a  combination  of  causes :  theological 
unrest ;  the  glamour  of  wealth  in  business  life ;  the  multi- 
plied openings  for  intellectual  work  and  social  service;  and 
the  deterrent  conditions  existing  in  the  ministry.  But  one 
chief  cause  for  the  shrinkage  in  the  ministry  must  be  the 
shrinkage  of  the  class  from  which  it  is  drawn.  A  spring  will 
dry  up  if  the  rock  formation  is  disturbed  or  removed  within 
which  the  water  collects.  When  the  best  elements  of  the 
country  and  village  churches  are  drained  off  to  the  city ;  when 
the  home  life  in  the  cities  is  narrowed  and  withered ;  when 
many  of  the  most  intelligent  men  of  the  middle  classes  have 
no  children  or  very  few  of  them  —  is  not  so  far  reaching  a  so- 
cial condition  sure  to  affect  the  supply  of  young  men  drawn 
from  these  social  classes  ? 

The  inequality  of  wealth  has  already  lowered  the  spirit  of 
the  ministry.  The  most  selfish  church  of  wealthy  people  can 
offer  a  better  salary  and  greater  social  advantages  than  the 
most  generous  church  of  working  people.  To  get  a  warm 
berth,  a  man  must  get  into  the  right  stratum  of  society. 
Smoothness  and  courtly  grace  may  count    for  more  than 


302  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

spirituality  and  earnestness.  Prophetic  vigor  may  even  be 
a  disqualifying  virtue.  It  is  hard  to  make  a  comparative 
judgment  of  so  elusive  a  thing  as  the  spirit  of  a  profession, 
but  it  does  seem  that  a  spirit  of  anxiety,  ambition,  and  self- 
advancement  is  gaining  ground  and  sapping  one  of  the  noblest 
of  all  professions  of  its  power  and  its  happiness.  When 
lawyers,  doctors,  teachers,  journalists,  and  artists  have  been 
"  commerciaHzed "  to  their  inner  loss,  is  it  likely  that  the 
ministry  can  escape? 

The  chief  reward  of  the  ministry  has  always  come  to  it  in 
the  affection  and  respect  of  the  people.  But  our  age  is  so 
drunk  with  the  love  of  money  that  anything  which  does  not 
pan  out  in  cold  cash  has  to  take  a  back  seat.  Our  newspapers 
constantly  speak  of  college  professors  and  ministers  in  a  tone 
of  patronizing  condescension.  The  salaries  of  teachers  are 
pitifully  inadequate  when  compared  with  their  value  to  the 
community.  They  turn  boys  and  girls  into  nobler  men  and 
women ;  a  successful  writer  of  advertisements  may  turn  a  lie 
into  dollars ;  clearly  he  deserves  the  higher  pay.  There  have 
been  times  when  the  community  had  a  truer  judgment  of 
comparative  values  and  gave  its  spir  tual  leaders  veneration 
and  love.  Our  commercial  system  has  begotten  a  fierce 
competitive  thirst  for  wealth.  It  has  concentrated  all  minds 
on  money,  and  accordingly  all  callings  which  serve  the  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  life  have  dropped  in  the  relative  im- 
portance and  honor  assigned  to  them.  The  ministry  is  one 
of  them.     It  has  lost  its  best  perquisites. 

Most  ministers  are  proletarians.  They  live  from  hand  to 
mouth  on  their  wages  like  other  wage-earners  and  have  no 
share  in  the  wealth-producing  capital  of  the  nation.  They 
may  not  share  in  the  class-consciousness  of  the  wage-workers, 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  303 

but  they  do  share  in  their  sufferings.  They,  too,  know  the 
bitterness  of  hunting  for  a  job  and  finding  a  long  line  of  ap- 
phcants  ahead  of  them.  Their  tenure,  too,  has  become  in- 
secure; what  used  to  be  a  life-position  has  become  a  rapid 
shifting.  Committees  naturally  tend  to  use  the  same  methods 
in  hiring  or  dismissing  a  minister  which  are  used  in  hiring 
or  "sacking"  any  other  employee.  Ministers,  too,  find  that 
old  men  are  not  wanted,  and  that  when  the  buoyancy  of  their 
youth  has  been  used  up,  they  are  put  aside  with  no  provision 
for  their  age.  They,  too,  find  that  the  trusts  can  advance 
prices  much  more  easily  than  the  wage-worker  can  advance 
his  wage.  Thus  the  minister  is  dragged  down  with  his  class, 
even  though  he  does  not  recognize  that  he  belongs  to  that 
class. 

Ill  health,  changes  of  belief,  painful  experiences  in  the 
pastorate,  or  inability  to  secure  a  position  often  make  it  seem 
desirable  to  a  minister  to  earn  his  living  in  some  other  way. 
He  casts  his  eye  wistfully  toward  other  professions.  If  there 
were  an  economical  organization  of  the  working  ability  of  the 
community  and  a  brisk  demand  for  men,  he  might  find  an 
opportunity.  If  the  labor  market  is  overstocked,  especially 
with  elderly  men,  he  finds  himself  shut  up  to  the  ministry  and 
resumes  his  work  there ;  but  now  no  longer  with  the  old  sense 
of  free  dedication,  but  with  the  consciousness  of  economic  com- 
pulsion. If  a  man  knows  that  he  can  leave,  he  may  not  want 
to  leave.  If  he  knows  that  he  never  can  leave,  he  may  yearn 
to  leave  and  pull  his  oar  like  a  galley-slave.  For  the  spirit 
of  the  ministry  it  is  desirable  that  the  door  of  exit  shall  be 
wide  open.  The  old  idea  of  "once  a  priest,  always  a  priest," 
is  a  relic  of  sacerdotal  religion  which  ascribed  an  indelible 
character  to  the  ordained  man.    Thus  the  independence  and 


304  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

joy  of  the  ministry  is  subtly  affected  by  the  condition  of  the 
labor  market.  There  are  probably  few  preachers  who  can 
say  that  they  have  never  been  influenced  by  the  fear  of  en- 
dangering their  income  when  they  shaped  or  delivered  their 
message  to  the  people.  They,  too,  are  ''in  bondage  through 
fear." 

The  Church       Other  Organizations  may  conceivably  be  indifferent  when 
erty.^°^        confronted  with  the  chronic  or  acute  poverty  of  our  cities. 
The  Christian  Church  cannot.     The  very  name  of  "  Chris- 
tian" would  turn  into  an  indictment  if  it  did  not  concern 
itself  in  the  situation  in  some  way. 

One  answer  to  the  challenge  of  the  Christian  spirit  has  been 
the  organization  of  institutional  church  work.  A  church 
perhaps  organizes  a  day-nursery  or  kindergarten;  a  play- 
ground for  the  children;  a  meeting-place  for  young  people, 
or  educational  facilities  for  those  who  are  ambitious.  It 
tries  to  do  for  people  who  are  living  under  abnormal  condi- 
tions what  these  people  under  normal  conditions  ought  to  do 
for  themselves.  This  saving  helpfulness  toward  the  poor 
must  be  distinguished  sharply  from  the  money-making  efforts 
of  some  churches  called  institutional,  which  simply  run  a 
continuous  sacred  variety  performance. 

Confront  the  Church  of  Christ  with  a  homeless,  playless, 
joyless,  proletarian  population,  and  that  is  the  kind  of  work 
to  which  some  Christian  spirits  will  inevitably  feel  impelled. 
All  honor  to  them !  But  it  puts  a  terrible  burden  on  the 
Church.  Institutional  work  is  hard  work  and  costly  work. 
It  requires  a  large  plant  and  an  expensive  staff.  It  puts  such 
a  strain  on  the  organizing  ability  and  the  sympathies  of  the 
workers  that  few  can  stand  it  long.    The  Church  by  the 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  305 

voluntary  gifts  and  labors  of  a  few  here  tries  to  furnish  what 
the  entire  cooperative  community  ought  to  furnish. 

Few  churches  have  the  resources  and  leadership  to  under- 
take institutional  work  on  a  large  scale,  but  most  churches 
in  large  cities  have  some  institutional  features,  and  all  pastors 
who  are  at  all  willing  to  do  it,  have  institutional  work  thrust 
on  them.  They  have  to  care  for  the  poor.  Those  of  us  who 
passed  through  the  last  great  industrial  depression  will  never  v 
forget  the  procession  of  men  out  of  work,  out  of  clothes,  out 
of  shoes,  and  out  of  hope.  They  wore  down  our  threshold, 
and  they  wore  away  our  hearts.  This  is  the  stake  of  the 
churches  in  modem  poverty.  They  are  buried  at  times 
under  a  stream  of  human  wreckage.  They  are  turned  aside 
constantly  from  their  more  spiritual  functions  to  "serve 
tables."  They  have  a  right,  therefore,  to  inquire  who  is  un- 
loading this  burden  of  poverty  and  suffering  upon  them  by 
underpaying,  exhausting,  and  maiming  the  people.  The  good 
Samaritan  did  not  go  after  the  robbers  with  a  shot-gun,  but  *^ 
looked  after  the  wounded  and  helpless  man  by  the  wayside. 
But  if  hundreds  of  good  Samaritans  travelling  the  same 
road  should  find  thousands  of  bruised  men  groaning  to  them, 
they  would  not  be  such  very  good  Samaritans  if  they 
did  not  organize  a  vigilance  committee  to  stop  the  manu- 
facturing of  wounded  men.  If  they  did  not,  presumably 
the  asses  who  had  to  lug  the  wounded  to  the  tavern  would 
have  the  wisdom  to  inquire  into  the  causes  of  their  extra 
work. 

An  architect  might  have  a  Parthenon  before  his  mind's  The  Church 
eye,  but  unless  he  had  quarries  for  the  marble,  he  could  not  man  mate- 
build  it.     A  general  might  be  a  military  genius,  but  if  the  rial. 


3o6  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

recruits  furnished  to  him  were  puny,  spiritless,  and  sick  with 
vices,  he  could  make  no  forced  marches  nor  fight  long-drawn 
battles.  Every  human  institution  needs  fit  human  material, 
as  well  as  a  great  idea. 

Clubs  and  fraternal  societies  can  pick  their  material;  the 
Church  cannot.  It  must  take  in  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men,  and  has  a  special  call  to  seek  out  and  draw  in  the  most 
abandoned  and  lost.  It  has  to  take  the  material  furnished 
to  it  by  secular  society.  If  that  material  is  degenerate,  the 
work  of  the  Church  is  harder  and  there  will  be  disastrous 
breaks.  The  lower  the  previous  moral  condition,  the  more 
frequent  the  backslidings.  Native  workers  on  foreign  mis- 
sion fields  sometimes  relapse  into  the  most  revolting  vices, 
because  their  bodies  and  imaginations  were  saturated  with 
contamination.  Rescue  missions  are  familiar  enough  with 
the  pitiful  attempts  of  broken  human  beings  to  rally  faith 
and  hope,  and  with  the  swift  collapse  of  the  enfeebled  will. 
If  large  sections  of  the  population  should  approximate  the 
condition  of  the  hobo,  what  chance  would  there  be  for 
church  work  among  them? 

Poverty  does  approximate  that  condition.  It  creates  a 
character  of  its  own.  Constant  underfeeding  and  frequent 
exhaustion  make  the  physical  tissues  flabby  and  the  brain 
prone  to  depression  and  vacillation,  incapable  of  holding 
tenaciously  to  a  distant  aim.  Mr.  Jacob  A.  Riis  says  that 
street  life  develops  in  the  child  "dislike  of  regular  work, 
physical  incapability  of  sustained  effort,  misdirected  love  of 
adventure,  gambling  propensities,  absence  of  energy,  an  un- 
trained will,  carelessness  of  the  happiness  of  others."  This 
characterization  will  apply  to  the  human  material  produced 
by  modern  city  poverty  everywhere.     Religious  faith  is  the 


THE    CHURCH   AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  307 

capacity  for  taking  long  outlooks  and  holding  all  minor  aims 
under  control  to  reach  the  highest.  Poverty  teaches  men  to 
live  from  hand  to  mouth,  and  for  the  moment.  The  expe- 
rience of  the  Salvation  Army  shows  that  the  poor  need  the 
strongest  thrills  of  excitement  and  the  most  rigid  discipline 
to  arouse  and  hold  them.  The  process  of  degeneration  can 
be  watched  in  acute  form  in  times  of  industrial  misery.  If 
the  decline  of  a  social  class  is  gradual,  it  escapes  observation 
and  only  the  final  results  appall  us. 

There  is  an  old  maxim  current  among  religious  workers 
that  times  of  national  disaster  are  followed  by  a  revival  of 
religion,  for  trouble  drives  men  to  God.  It  is  true  that  in 
the  lower  stages  of  religion,  famine,  pestilence,  and  earth- 
quake drove  men  to  their  temples  and  churches  to  plead 
with  their  angry  gods.  The  priests  of  the  temples  would 
be  likely  to  regard  that  as  a  hopeful  revival  of  religion ;  we 
should  call  it  a  superstitious  panic.  It  is  true  also  that  every 
deep  emotion  of  joy  or  sorrow  acts  like  the  earthquake  at 
Philippi :  it  opens  the  gates  of  the  soul  in  the  darkness,  and 
then  great  things  may  happen. ,  Both  the  birth  and  the  death 
of  a  child  may  turn  the  parents  to  nobler  thoughtfulness. 
But  long-continued  economic  helplessness  of  entire  classes 
acts  differently.  That  bears  the  soul  down  with  a  numbing 
sense  of  injustice  and  despair.  Israel  in  Egypt  "hearkened 
not  unto  Moses  for  anguish  of  spirit  and  for  cruel  bondage." 
The  industrial  depression  of  the  90's  was  followed  by  moral 
disintegration  and  religious  lethargy.  It  took  the  churches 
longer  than  commerce  to  recover  from  that  paralysis  of  hope- 
lessness. The  maxim  quoted  is  a  relic  of  the  ascetic  view 
of  life,  which  assumed  that  a  man  was  closest  to  holiness 
when  he  was  most  emaciated  and  stripped  of  the  joys  of  life. 


3o8  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  churches  may  well  pray  like  the  wise  man,  "Give 
me  neither  poverty  nor  riches."  ^  Poverty  and  luxury  alike 
enervate  the  will  and  degenerate  the  human  material  for 
religion.  Both  create  the  love  of  idleness,  vagrant  habits, 
the  dislike  of  self-restraint,  and  the  incHnation  to  indulge  in 
the  passing  emotions.  Ethical  religion  calls  for  precisely  the 
opposite  qualities.  It  is  written  large  in  the  present  condi- 
tions of  the  churches  that  they  flourish  best  among  people 
who  have  income  enough  for  health  and  comfort,  security 
enough  for  cheer  and  hope,  and  leisure  enough  to  cultivate 
the  higher  sides  of  life.  In  London  the  type  of  religion  rep- 
resented by  the  Free  Churches  thrives  best  in  the  middle-class 
parishes.^  When  a  certain  line  of  poverty  has  been  passed, 
the  churches  lose  their  hold  almost  completely,  in  spite  of 
the  most  heroic  efforts  of  Christian  men  and  women.  A 
social  system  which  lifts  a  small  minority  into  great  wealth, 
and  submerges  a  great  number  in  poverty,  is  thus  directly 
hostile  to  the  interests  of  the  Church.  A  system  which  would 
distribute  wealth  with  approximate  fairness  and  equality 
would  ofifer  honest  religion  the  best  working  chance. 

The  hostile  Human  nature  is  the  raw  material  for  the  Christian  char- 
commwcial-  ^cter.  The  spirit  of  Christ  working  in  the  human  spirit  is 
*s°*'  to  elevate  the  aims,  ennoble  the  motives,  and  intensify  the 

affections.     This  process  is  never  complete.     The  Christian 

is  always  but  in  the  making. 
In  the  same  way  human  society  is  the  raw  material  for 

Christian  society.     The  spirit  of  Christ  is  to  hallow  all  the 

natural  relations  of  men  and  give  them  a  divine  significance 

*  Proverbs  30.  8-9. 

'  Charles  Booth,  "Life  and  Labor  in  London,"  Third  Series. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  309 

and  value.  This  process,  too,  is  never  complete.  The  king- 
dom of  God  is  always  but  coming. 

The  situation  is  changed  when  the  individual  presents  not 
only  the  obstacles  of  raw  human  nature,  a  will  sluggish  to 
good,  a  preference  for  pleasure  rather  than  duty,  and  the 
clogging  influence  of  evil  habits,  but  a  spirit  and  principles 
consciously  hostile  to  the  influence  of  Christianity,  and  sets 
defiant  pride  and  selfishness  against  the  gentleness  and  un- 
selfishness urged  by  the  spirit  of  Jesus. 

In  the  same  way  the  situation  is  changed  when  the  social 
relations  are  dominated  by  a  principle  essentially  hostile  to 
the  social  conceptions  of  Christ.  Then  the  condition  is  not 
that  of  a  stubborn  raw  material  yielding  slowly  to  the  higher 
fashioning  force,  but  of  two  antagonistic  spirits  grappling 
for  the  mastery.  The  more  such  a  hostile  principle  domi- 
nates secular  society,  the  more  difiicult  will  be  the  task  of 
the  Church  when  it  tries  to  bring  the  Christ-spirit  to  victori- 
ous ascendency. 

Christianity  bases  all  human  relations  on  love,  which  is 
the  equalizing  and  society-making  impulse.  The  Golden 
Rule  makes  the  swift  instincts  of  self-preservation  a  rule  by 
which  we  are  to  divine  what  we  owe  to  our  neighbor.  Any- 
thing incompatible  with  love  would  stand  indicted.  Christ's 
way  to  greatness  is  through  preeminent  social  service.  Self- 
development  is  desirable  because  it  helps  us  to  serve  the 
better.  So  far  as  the  influence  of  the  Christian  spirit  goes, 
it  bows  the  egoism  of  the  individual  to  the  service  of  the 
community.  It  bids  a  man  live  his  life  for  the  kingdom  of 
God. 

In  urging  the  social  duty  of  love,  Christianity  encounters 
the  natural  selfishness  of  human  nature.     But  this  is  not  a 


3IO  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

hostile  force.  It  is  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  without 
which  no  child  would  survive.  In  a  well-trained  child  the 
frank  egoism  of  the  baby  is  steadily  modified  by  a  growing 
sense  of  duty  and  of  solidarity  with  the  family  and  the  little 
social  group  in  which  it  moves.  With  the  change  of  adoles- 
cence comes  a  powerful  instinct  of  self-devotion  to  society. 
If  the  influence  of  Christianity  accompanies  the  child  during 
this  development,  and  comes  to  conscious  adoption  in  the 
adolescent  period,  it  gives  an  immense  reenforcement  to  the 
moralizing  influence  of  the  family  and  the  school,  and  creates 
a  character  ready  for  real  social  life  and  service.  If  the  larger 
human  society  into  which  the  young  man  or  woman  then 
enters  were  adapted  to  continue  the  social  training  given  in 
the  family  and  the  school ;  if  the  industrial  life  which  moulds 
the  adult  set  tasks  for  conscious  social  service  and  inspired 
all  workers  with  the  sense  of  moral  solidarity,  social  life 
would  be  so  closely  akin  to  the  Christian  conception  that  the 
task  of  Christianity  would  be  easy,  and  comparative  success 
would  be  within  reach. 

Instead  of  that  the  young  adult  in  the  most  plastic  time 
of  his  development  is  immersed  in  an  industrial  life  which 
largely  tends  to  counteract  and  neutralize  Christian  teach- 
ing and  training.  Competitive  industry  and  commerce  are 
based  on  selfishness  as  the  dominant  instinct  and  duty,  just 
as  Christianity  is  based  on  love.  It  will  outbuy  and  outsell 
its  neighbor  if  it  can.  It  tries  to  take  his  trade  and  grasp  all 
visible  sources  of  income  in  its  own  hand.  The  rule  of  trade, 
to  buy  in  the  cheapest  market  and  sell  in  the  dearest,  simply 
means  that  a  man  must  give  as  little  to  the  other  man  and 
get  as  much  from  him  as  possible.  This  rule  makes  even 
honest  competitive  trade  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  immense 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    SOCIAL    MOVEMENT  3II 

volume  of  more  or  less  dishonest  and  rapacious  trade  —  an- 
tagonistic to  Christian  principles.  The  law  of  Christ,  wher- 
ever it  finds  expression,  reverses  the  law  of  trade.  It  bids 
us  demand  little  for  ourselves  and  give  much  service.  A 
mother  does  not  try  to  make  as  rich  a  living  as  possible,  and 
to  give  a  minimum  of  service  to  her  children.  It  would  be 
a  sorry  teacher  who  would  lie  awake  thinking  how  he  could 
comer  the  market  in  education  and  give  his  students  as 
small  a  chunk  of  information  as  possible  from  the  pedagogic 
ice-wagon.  The  relation  between  a  minister  and  a  church 
is  Christian  only  when  the  church  pays  him  as  well  as  it  can 
afford  to  do,  and  he  gives  as  whole-hearted  and  complete 
service  as  he  can  get  out  of  himself.  There  are  some  pro- 
fessions and  some  social  relations  which  are  in  the  main 
dominated  by  the  Christian  conceptions  of  solidarity  and 
service,  and  they  are  the  only  ones  that  arouse  our  enthusi- 
asm or  win  our  love.  Industry  and  commerce  are  not  in 
that  class. 

Commerce  has  moved  away  from  the  golden  age  of  com- 
petition, when  business  men  were  like  Ishmaels,  with  every 
man's  hand  against  every  other  man.  Large  social  groups 
are  now  working  on  the  principle  of  cooperation  in  great 
corporations.  That  develops  loyalty  and  human  good-will 
within  the  cooperative  group.  But  only  within  it.  Every 
trust  still  has  a  lot  of  outsiders  whom  it  has  to  fight  and 
tame  into  submission.  The  wonderful  mechanism  of  a  great 
department  store  is  not  directed  merely  to  mutual  service,  but 
also  to  the  undoing  of  its  competitors.  A  board  of  directors 
may  feel  a  sense  of  coherence,  —  modified  by  a  fear  of  treach- 
ery, —  but  when  they  turn  toward  their  employees  and  toward 
the  public,  the  sense  of  solidarity  ends.     It  is  probably  fair  to 


312  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

say  that  the  great  business  world  is  not  appreciably  influenced 
in  its  daily  struggles  by  the  consciousness  that  it  exists  to 
serve  mankind.  A  minister,  a  doctor,  a  teacher,  an  artist,  a 
soldier,  or  a  public  official  may  forget  it  often  and  may  turn 
traitor  to  the  principle  altogether;  but  if  he  is  good  for  any- 
thing, he  will  always  feel  the  constraint  of  the  higher  principle 
upon  him.  In  these  callings  it  is  comparatively  easy  for  a 
man  to  realize  the  joy  and  strength  of  that  principle,  if  he 
is  only  willing.  In  business  life  the  constraint  is  all  the 
other  way.  The  social  value  of  business  is  reserved  for  orna- 
mental purposes  in  after-dinner  speeches.  There  all  profes- 
sions claim  to  exist  for  the  good  of  society.  At  a  recent  dinner 
of  the  Pawnbrokers'  Association  of  New  York,  Mr.  Abraham 
Levy  spoke  of  the  company  as  "the  benefactors  and  bearers 
of  the  burdens  of  the  poor,"  and  doubtless  he  believed  it 
when  he  said  it. 

Every  human  institution  creates  a  philosophy  which  hallows 
it  to  those  who  profit  by  it  and  allays  the  objections  of  those 
who  are  victimized  by  it.  Thus  M.  Pobiedonestzeff,  the 
great  procurator  of  the  Holy  Synod  in  Russia,  taught  the 
sacredness  of  the  autocracy  and  thereby  strengthened  the 
hands  of  those  who  kept  the  people  down.  Where  alcoholism 
dominates  the  customs  of  a  people,  it  weaves  a  halo  around 
itself  in  the  songs  and  social  observances  of  the  people,  till 
joy  and  friendship  seem  to  be  inseparable  from  mild  narcotic 
paralysis  of  the  nerve  centres.  Similarly,  the  competitive 
industry  has  its  own  philosophy  to  justify  the  ways  of  busi- 
ness unto  men.  "Competition  is  the  life  of  trade."  "If 
every  man  will  do  the  best  for  himself,  he  will  thereby  do 
the  best  for  society."  In  short,  the  surest  way  to  be  unselfish 
is  to  look  out  for  Number  One. 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  313 

This  individualistic  philosophy  was  worked  out  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  in  order  to  cut  away  the  artificial 
restraints  inherited  from  a  by-gone  period  of  industry.  The 
noblest  thinkers  enthusiastically  believed  that  the  unfettered 
operation  of  self-love  would  result  in  happy  conditions  for 
all.  Experience  has  proved  this  a  ghastly  mistake.  Scientific 
thought  and  practical  statesmanship  have  abandoned  the 
policy  of  unrestrained  competition.  The  more  enlightened 
business  men,  too,  view  it  with  moral  uneasiness  and  a  certain 
shame.  The  selfish  hardness  of  business  life  is  to  them  a 
sad  fact,  but  they  feel  they  must  play  the  game  according  to 
the  rules  of  the  game.  Yet  as  long  as  competitive  commerce 
continues  and  is  the  source  of  profit  in  the  business  world, 
competitive  selfishness  will  be  defended  as  the  true  law  of 
Ufe. 

As  soon  as  the  competitive  philosophy  of  life  encounters 
an  opposing  philosophy  in  socialism,  it  is  angrily  insistent 
on  its  own  righteousness.  The  same  is  the  case  when  any 
attempt  is  made  to  urge  the  Christian  law  of  life  as  obliga- 
tory for  business  as  well  as  private  life.  "Don't  mix  busi- 
ness and  religion. "  "  B  usiness  is  business. "  These  common 
maxims  express  the  consciousness  that  there  is  a  radical 
divergence  between  the  two  domains  of  life,  and  that  the 
Christian  rules  of  conduct  would  forbid  many  common 
transactions  of  business  and  make  success  in  it  impossible. 
Thus  life  is  cut  into  two  halves,  each  governed  by  a  law 
opposed  to  that  of  the  other,  and  the  law  of  Christ  is  denied 
even  the  opportunity  to  gain  control  of  business.  When  a 
man  lives  a  respectable  and  religious  life  in  one  part  of  the 
city  and  a  life  of  vice  in  another  part,  he  is  said  to  live  a 
double  life.    That  is  the  heart-breaking  condition  forced 


314  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

upon  Christian  business  men  by  the  antagonism  of  Chris- 
tianity and  competitive  commerce.  They  have  to  try  to  do 
what  Christ  declares  impossible  :  to  serve  God  and  mammon. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  many  try  to  maintain  their  faith  in  their 
own  integrity  of  character  by  denying  that  business  life  is 
antagonistic  to  Christianity  at  all.  But  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity judge  differently.  The  moral  sincerity  of  the  most 
prominent  members  of  the  churches  is  impugned  by  the 
public,  which  has  little  sympathy  with  the  tragic  situation  in 
which  Christian  business  men  find  themselves.  This  deeply 
affects  the  moral  prestige  of  the  churches  in  the  community. 
They  are  forced  into  the  defensive  instead  of  challenging  the 
community  to  a  higher  standard  of  morals. 

When  two  moral  principles  are  thus  forced  into  practical 
antagonism  in  daily  life,  the  question  is  which  will  be  the 
stronger.  If  the  Church  cannot  Christianize  commerce, 
commerce  will  commercialize  the  Church.  When  the 
churches  buy  and  sell,  they  follow  the  usual  methods  and  often 
drive  hard  bargains.  When  they  hire  and  dismiss  their  em- 
ployees, they  are  coming  more  and  more  to  use  the  methods 
of  the  labor  market.  In  the  teaching  of  the  Church  those  ele- 
ments of  the  ethics  of  Jesus  which  are  in  antagonism  to  com- 
mercial life  are  toned  down  or  unconsciously  dropped  out  of 
sight.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  in  which  Jesus  clearly 
defines  the  points  of  difference  between  his  ethics  and  the 
current  morality,  is  always  praised  reverently,  but  rarely 
taken  seriously.  Its  edge  is  either  blunted  by  an  alleviating 
exegesis,  or  it  is  asserted  that  it  is  intended  for  the  millennium 
and  not  for  the  present  social  life.  When  the  religious  teach- 
vv  ings  of  Tolstoi  first  became  known  in  the  8o's,  they  gave 
many  of  us  a  shock  of  surprise  by  asserting  with  the  voice 


THE    CHURCH   AND   THE    SOCIAL    MOVEMENT  315 

of  faith  that  these  were  the  obligatory  and  feasible  laws  of 
Christian  conduct.  Thus  the  principles  of  commerce  affect 
the  moral  practice  of  the  Church  and  silence  its  moral  teach- 
ings in  so  far  as  they  are  antagonistic  to  business  morality. 

We  pointed  out  that  there  are  some  departments  of  hfe 
which  are  to  some  degree  under  the  actual  dominion  of  the 
Christian  principle,  especially  personal  morality,  the  family 
life,  and  neighborly  social  intercourse.  But  the  principle  in- 
corporated in  business  life  is  so  deeply  affecting  the  methods 
of  action,  the  points  of  view,  and  the  philosophy  of  life  as 
preached  in  the  press  and  in  conversation,  that  it  is  en- 
croaching even  on  those  realms  of  life  which  have  hitherto 
been  blessed  by  Christ's  law.  If  Christianity  cannot  ad- 
vance, it  will  have  to  retreat  even  from  the  territory  already 
claimed  by  it. 

If  the  Church  cannot  bring  business  imder  Christ's  law 
of  sohdarity  and  service,  it  will  find  his  law  not  merely 
neglected  in  practice,  but  flouted  in  theory.  With  many  the 
Darwinian  theory  has  proved  a  welcome  justification  of  things 
as  they  are.  It  is  right  and  fitting  that  thousands  should 
perish  to  evolve  the  higher  type  of  the  modem  business  man. 
Those  who  are  manifestly  surviving  in  the  present  struggle 
for  existence  can  console  themselves  with  the  thought  that 
they  are  the  fittest,  and  there  is  no  contradicting  the  laws  of 
the  universe.  Thus  an  atomistic  philosophy  crowds  out  the 
Christian  faith  in  solidarity.  The  law  of  the  cross  is  super- 
seded by  the  law  of  tooth  and  nail.  It  is  not  even  ideal  and 
desirable  "to  seek  and  to  save  the  lost,"  because  it  keeps  the 
weak  and  unfit  alive.  The  philosophy  of  Nietzsche,  which 
is  deeply  affecting  the  ethical  thought  of  the  modem  world, 
scouts  the  Christian  virtues  as  the  qualities  of  slaves.    It 


3l6  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

glorifies  the  strong  man's  self-assertion  which  treads  under- 
foot whatever  hinders  him  from  living  out  his  life  to  the 
full.  The  philosophy  regnant  in  any  age  is  always  the  direct 
outgrowth  of  the  sum  total  of  life  in  that  age.  We  view  Neo- 
Platonism,  for  instance,  as  the  necessary  product  of  the  third 
century.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  students  of  some  future  cen- 
tury will  establish  an  intimate  causal  connection  between 
the  industrial  system  which  evolves  the  modem  captain  of 
-  industry  and  the  philosophy  of  Nietzsche  which  justifies  and 
glorifies  him. 

On  the  other  hand,  among  the  masses  who  are  being  ground 
up  in  this  evolutionary  mill  there  will  be  a  growing  sense  of 
the  inexorable  cruelty  of  natural  law  and  a  failing  faith  in 
the  fundamental  goodness  of  the  universe.  And  if  the  uni- 
verse is  not  at  bottom  good,  then  the  God  who  made  it  and 
who  runs  it  is  not  good.  Or  perhaps  there  is  no  God  at  all. 
Goodness  is  folly.  Force  rules  the  world.  Let  us  use  what 
force  we  have,  grasp  what  we  can,  and  die.  The  Church  in 
the  past  has  been  able  to  appeal  to  the  general  faith  in  a 
good  and  just  God  and  to  intensify  that.  If  that  half-un- 
conscious religion  of  the  average  man  once  gives  way  to  a 
sullen  materialism,  there  will  be  a  permanent  echpse  of  the 
light  of  life  among  us. 

This  is  the  stake  of  the  Church  in  the  social  crisis.  If  one 
vast  domain  of  life  is  dominated  by  principles  antagonistic  to 
the  ethics  of  Christianity,  it  will  inculcate  habits  and  gener- 
ate ideas  which  will  undermine  the  law  of  Christ  in  all  other 
domains  of  life  and  even  deny  the  theoretical  validity  of  it. 
If  the  Church  has  not  faith  enough  in  the  Christian  law  to 
assert  its  sovereignty  over  all  relations  of  society,  men  will 
deny  that  it  is  a  good  and  practicable  law  at  all.     If  the 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  317 

Church  cannot  conquer  business,  business  will  conquer  the 
Church. 

The  world  is  getting  small.     The  shuttle  of  travel  is  weav-  Christian 
ing  back  and  forth.     The  East  and  the  West  have  met.     We  aS^forerg"n 
are  camping  in  the  front  yard  of  the  Hindu  and  Chinaman,  missions, 
and  they  are  peering  over  the  fence  into  our  back  yard. 
Never  before  since  Islam  contended  with  Christendom  for 
the  mastery  of  the   Mediterranean  world  has  the  Church 
been  compelled  to  confront  the  non-Christian  religions  as 
now. 

The  modem  movement  of  foreign  missions  was  the  response 
of  the  spirit  of  Christ  in  the  Church  to  the  opportunity  pre- 
sented by  the  new  world-wide  commerce.  From  the  outset 
the  missionaries  were  put  to  it  to  explain  what  relation  the 
white  traders  who  sold  the  natives  rum  and  brought  them 
contagious  diseases  bore  to  the  Jesus-religion  taught  by  the 
missionaries.  Trade  made  the  way  for  missions,  but  traders 
also  frustrated  Christianity.  To-day  commerce  is  bearing  ,  ,-■  ■ 
down  on  the  non-Christian  nations  with  relentless  eagerness, 
breaking  down  their  national  independence  at  the  cannon's 
mouth,  breaking  up  their  customs  and  tribal  coherence,  in- 
dustrializing them,  atomizing  them,  and  always  making  profit 
on  them.  At  the  same  time  the  non-Christian  peoples  are 
getting  intimate  information  about  Christianity  as  it  works 
in  its  own  home.  They  travel  through  our  slums  and  in- 
spect Packingtown.  They  see  our  poverty  and  our  vice,  our 
wealth  and  our  heartlessness,  and  they  like  their  own  forms 
of  misery  rather  better.  "By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them,"  when  applied  to  religions,  reads,  "By  their  civiliza- 
tions ye  shall  know  them."     The  moral  prestige  of  Christian 


31 8  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

civilization  ought  to  be  the  most  valuable  stock  in  trade  for 
the  foreign  representatives  of  Christianity;  instead  of  that  it 
is  forcing  missionaries  into  an  apologetic  attitude.  With  all 
the  faults  that  any  one  can  point  out  in  it,  the  foreign  mission 
work  of  the  modem  Church  is  one  of  the  most  splendid  ex- 
pressions of  the  Christ  spirit  in  history,  full  of  blessing  for 
the  Church  at  home,  and  fuller  of  historic  importance  for  the 
future  of  mankind  than  any  man  can  now  foresee.  Here  the 
Church  is  really  on  the  fighting-line.  But  here  its  sword-arm 
is  paralyzed  by  the  existence  of  a  mass  of  unchristianized  life 
in  its  own  camp.  Our  industrial  life  antagonizes  our  Chris- 
tian gospel  to  non-Christian  nations. 

It  even  reacts  on  the  faith  of  the  people  at  home.  The 
Japanese  war  has  furnished  a  demonstration  of  the  moral 
qualities  of  a  heathen  nation  in  an  object  lesson  so  brilliant 
that  it  has  gone  home  with  all  the  world.  It  has  shaken  our 
confidence  in  the  easy  moral  supremacy  of  Christianity.  We 
are  gaining  in  respect  for  the  spiritual  forces  resident  in  other 
nations  at  the  same  time  that  we  are  getting  an  ever  more 
vivid  sense  of  our  evils  at  home  and  of  our  impotence  in  deal- 
ing with  them. 

Thus  our  unsettled  social  problems  dog  the  footsteps  of 
the  Church  wherever  it  goes.  The  social  wrongs  which  we 
permit  at  home  contradict  our  gospel  abroad  and  debilitate 
our  missionary  enthusiasm  at  home.  With  what  different  con- 
fidence we  should  present  the  claims  of  our  religion  abroad 
if  our  missionaries  went  out  from  a  nation  of  free  men,  living 
in  social  equality  and  organized  fraternity ! 

To  most  thoughtful  men  to-day  the  social  question  is  the 
absorbing  intellectual  problem  of  our  time.    To  the  workmg 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  319 

class  it  is  more.     Socialism  is  their  class  movement.     The  The  Church 
great  forward  movement  inaugurated  by  the  French  Revolu-  ^!^rking 
tion  was  the  movement  of  the  business  men  who  wrested  class, 
political  control  from  the  feudal  nobility  and  clergy.     The 
wage-workers  were  then  neither  strong  nor  intelligent  enough 
to  force  a  readjustment  of  rights  in  their  favor.     That  class 
is  now  in  its  birth-throes.     The  rest  of  us  may  be  sym- 
pathetic onlookers  and  helpers,  but  to  them  it  is  a  question 
of  life  and  death. 

Every  great  movement  which  so  profoundly  stirs  men,  un- 
locks the  depths  of  their  religious  nature,  just  as  great  ex- 
periences in  our  personal  life  make  the  individual  susceptible 
to  religious  emotion.  When  the  chaotic  mass  of  humanity 
stirs  to  the  throb  of  a  new  creative  day,  it  always  feels  the 
spirit  of  God  hovering  over  it.  The  large  hope  which  then 
beckons  men,  the  ideal  of  justice  and  humanity  which  in- 
spires them,  the  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  to  the  cause 
which  they  exhibit  —  these  are  in  truth  religious. 

As  long  as  the  people  are  still  patriotic  and  religious,  their 
first  impulse  is  to  march  under  the  banner  of  their  inherited 
religion,  sure  that  it  must  be  on  their  side.  When  the  Ger- 
man peasants  in  1525  set  forth  their  simple  and  just  de- 
mands in  the  celebrated  "Twelve  Articles,"  they  based  them 
all  on  the  Bible  and  offered  to  surrender  any  demand  which 
should  be  proved  out  of  harmony  with  God's  word.*  Thus 
again  the  people  of  St.  Petersburg  on  January  22,  1905, 
moved  to  the  Winter  Palace  to  present  their  petition  to  "the  ^ 
Little  Father,"  led  by  a  priest  in  the  vestments  of  religion, 
and  bearing  before  them  the  portrait  of  the  Czar  and  the 

*  E.  Belfort  Bax,  "The  Peasants'  War  in  Germany";  Zimmermann, 
"Geschichte  des  Bauernkrieges." 


320  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  SOCIAL   CRISIS 

cross  of  Christ.  In  both  cases  the  response  to  their  petition 
was  a  massacre. 

It  is  humiliating  to  say  that  the  confidence  with  which  the 
people  at  the  beginning  of  such  risings  have  turned  to  their 
religion  for  moral  backing  has  not  been  justified  in  the  past. 
Luther  had  scant  sympathy  with  the  peasants  at  the  outset, 
and  as  soon  as  they  used  force  against  the  castles  of  the 
barons  and  the  monasteries,  he  called  for  forcible  repression 
in  the  most  violent  language.  The  pope,  too,  wrote  a  con- 
gratulatory letter  to  those  who  had  been  most  active  in  re- 
pressing the  movement.  The  state  Church  in  Russia  is  cer- 
tainly not  on  the  side  of  the  revolution,  though  many  of  her 
priests  may  be.  The  churches  in  Europe  were  almost  uni- 
versally hostile  to  the  French  Revolution. 

When  the  people  find  their  apsirations  opposed  and  re- 
pudiated by  their  churches,  they  turn  away  chilled  or  angry. 
It  is  then  a  question  whether  the  discipline  of  the  Church  is 
sufficiently  strong  to  turn  the  people  back  from  the  popular 
movement  and  retain  them  in  obedience  to  the  Church. 
That  is  the  problem  which  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is 
now  confronting  in  its  opposition  to  socialism.  It  is  trying 
to  quarantine  the  Catholic  workingmen  in  organizations  of 
their  own  and  to  keep  them  immune  from  the  bacillus  of 
socialism.  It  is  far  fitter  for  such  paternal  repression  than 
the  Protestant  churches,  but  its  ultimate  success  is  dubious. 
The  mass  of  the  people  are  more  likely  to  sweep  on  and  away 
from  churchly  religion.  When  the  dearest  ethical  convic- 
tions of  the  people  in  such  a  crisis  are  brought  into  collision 
with  organized  religion,  the  result  is  sad  for  the  people  and 
disastrous  for  the  Church. 

In  Germany  the  process  has  worked  out  its  conclusions 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  32I 

quite  fully.  For  a  long  time  the  German  state  Church  took 
no  sympathetic  interest  in  the  socialist  movement.  It  preached  */ 
loyalty  to  the  king,  the  divine  necessity  of  social  classes,  sub- 
mission, and  godly  patience.  A  socialist  was  a  heathen  and 
a  publican.  It  was  generally  denied  that  a  man  could  be 
both  a  socialist  and  a  Christian.  The  socialists  in  their 
propaganda  constantly  encountered  the  Church  as  a  spiritual 
and  social  force  defending  the  existing  social  order,  a  bulwark 
of  privilege  and  conservatism.  They  could  gain  a  man  for 
socialism  only  by  undermining  the  authority  of  the  Church 
over  his  mind.  At  the  same  time  the  leaders  of  the  working 
class  were  drinking  in  eagerly  the  new  results  of  natural 
science  and  philosophy,  which  at  that  time  was  baldly 
atheistic  in  Germany.  "Science,"  as  popularized  in  socialist 
literature  and  propaganda,  was  atheistic  materialism.  The  - 
German  Social  Democracy  professes  to  be  indifferent  to 
religion  and  declares  it  a  private  affair,  but  actually  it  is  a 
force  hostile  to  religion.  The  tide  of  socialism  has  risen  until 
now  the  Social  Democratic  Party  is  almost  coextensive  with 
the  working  class  in  the  cities.  Gradually  the  Church  woke 
up.  It  tried  to  remedy  the  social  misery  of  the  people  by 
charitable  work  and  by  alleviative  legislation  on  the  basis  of 
the  existing  social  order.  In  both  directions  splendid  work 
has  been  done,  but  the  allegiance  of  the  people  has  not  been 
regained.  The  clergy  are  now  thoroughly  awake  to  social 
questions.  Many  of  them  are  more  or  less  socialistic  in  their 
thought,  but  the  State  and  the  governing  bodies  of  the  Church 
have  favored  the  social  activity  of  the  clergy  only  when  it 
seemed  likely  to  quiet  the  people  and  establish  the  existing 
order,  and  have  been  harshly  repressive  as  soon  as  individual 
ministers  went  farther. 


322  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  Church  in  past  centuries  repeatedly  lost  the  respect 
and  affections  of  the  people  by  its  corruptions  and  the  op- 
pression which  it  sanctioned  and  intensified,  but  it  was  able 
to  regain  its  hold  when  it  repented  and  improved.  It  may  be 
that  in  coming  days  the  Church  in  Germany  will  regain  its 
old  influence  in  the  life  of  the  people.  But  the  outlook  is  not 
sure.  The  old  mediaeval  reverence  for  the  Church  as  the 
only  mediator  of  salvation  is  gone,  and  the  people  are  per- 
manently critical  in  spirit.  Formerly  the  Church  was  able  to 
envelop  itself  in  awe  by  the  shimmering  mist  of  idealized 
history  which  it  spread  about  its  past  services.  The  people 
are  now  educated  beyond  that.  So  the  future  is  sombre. 
When  a  mountain-side  is  once  denuded  of  vegetation  and  the 
roots  of  the  trees  no  longer  lace  the  soil  together  and  hold  the 
rain,  the  soil  is  washed  down  into  the  valleys.  The  rocks  are 
again  corroded  and  might  form  new  soil,  but  as  it  is  formed, 
it  is  again  washed  away.  Because  the  rocks  are  bare,  they 
stay  bare.  From  him  that  hath  not  is  taken  even  that  which 
he  hath. 

In  our  own  country  we  are  still  at  the  parting  of  the  ways. 
Our  social  movement  is  still  in  its  earliest  stages.  The  bitter- 
ness and  anger  of  their  fight  has  not  eaten  into  the  heart  of  the 
working  classes  as  it  has  abroad.  Many  of  them  are  still 
ready  to  make  their  fight  in  the  name  of  God  and  Christ, 
though  not  of  the  Church.  Populistic  conventions  used  to 
recite  the  Lord's  Prayer  with  deep  feeling.  The  Single  Tax 
movement  utilized  religious  ideas  freely.  A  Cooper  Union 
meeting  cheered  Father  McGlynn  when  he  recited  the  words : 
"Thy  kingdom  come  !  Thy  will  be  done  on  earth  !"  Some 
of  the  favorite  speakers  and  organizers  of  the  socialists  in  our 
country  are  former  Christian  ministers,  who  use  their  power  of 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  323 

ethical  and  religious  appeal.  In  Labor  Lyceums  and  similar 
gatherings,  ministers  are  often  invited  as  speakers,  though 
perhaps  quite  as  much  in  the  hope  of  converting  them  as  vi^ith 
a  desire  to  hear  what  they  have  to  say.  The  divorce  between 
the  new  class  movement  and  the  old  religion  can  still  be 
averted. 

It  is  a  hopeful  fact  that  in  our  country  the  Church  is  so 
close  to  the  common  people.  In  many  of  the  largest  denomina- 
tions the  churches  are  organized  as  pure  democracies,  and  the 
people  own  and  run  them.  Our  ministry  is  not  an  heredi- 
tary pundit  class,  but  most  ministers  have  sprung  from  plain 
families  and  have  worked  for  their  living  before  they  became 
ministers.  The  Church  is  not  connected  with  the  State  and 
is  not  tainted,  as  in  Europe,  with  the  reputation  of  being  a 
plain-clothes  policeman  to  club  the  people  into  spiritual 
submission  to  the  ruling  powers.  The  churches  of  monar- 
chical countries  have  preached  loyalty  to  the  monarchy  as  an 
essential  part  of  Christian  character.  The  Church  in  America 
believes  heartily  in  political  democracy.  But  a  Church 
which  beheves  in  political  democracy  can  easily  learn  to  be- 
lieve in  industrial  democracy  as  soon  as  it  comprehends  the 
connection.  It  has  one  foot  in  the  people's  camp.  The  type 
of  Christianity  prevailing  in  America  was  developed  in  the 
Puritan  Revolution  and  has  retained  the  spirit  of  its  origin. 
It  is  radical,  evangelical,  and  has  the  strong  bent  toward 
politics  which  Calvinism  has  everywhere  had.  American 
ministers  naturally  take  a  keen  interest  in  public  life,  and,  as 
well  as  they  know,  have  tried  to  bring  the  religious  forces  to 
bear  at  least  on  some  aspects  of  public  affairs. 

As  a  result  of  these  characteristics,  the  Christian  Church 
in  America  is  actually  deeply  affected  by  sympathy  with  the 


324  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

social  movement.  It  stands  now,  at  the  very  beginning  of  the 
social  movement  in  America,  where  the  repentant  Church  of 
Germany  stands  after  a  generation  of  punishment  by  atheistic 
socialism.  No  other  learned  profession  seems  to  be  so  open  to 
socialist  ideals  as  the  ministry.  Several  years  ago  the  Nmv 
York  Evening  Post  began  to  lament  that  the  Church  had  gone 
over  to  socialism. 

Nevertheless  the  working  class  have  not  as  yet  gained  the 
impression  that  the  Church  is  a  positive  reenforcement  to 
them  in  their  struggle.  The  impression  is  rather  the  other 
way.  The  eminent  ministers  whose  utterances  are  most 
widely  disseminated  are  usually  the  pastors  of  wealthy 
churches,  and  it  is  natural  that  they  should  echo  the  views 
taken  by  the  friends  with  whom  they  are  in  sympathetic 
intercourse.  Even  those  ministers  who  are  intellectually 
interested  in  social  problems  are  not  always  in  sympathy  with 
the  immediate  conflicts  of  the  working  class.  They  may 
take  a  lively  interest  in  municipal  reform  or  public  ownership, 
and  yet  view  dubiously  the  efforts  to  create  a  fighting  organi- 
zation for  labor  or  to  end  the  wages  system.  We  are  of  a 
different  class  and  find  it  hard  to  sympathize  with  the  class 
struggle  of  the  wage-workers. 

In  recent  years  many  ministers  have  spoken  frankly  and 
boldly  against  the  physical  violence  and  brutality  in  con- 
nection with  the  great  strikes,  and  against  the  denial  of 
"the  right  to  work."  The  former  protest  was  made  in  the 
name  of  law  and  order,  the  latter  in  the  name  of  liberty.  No 
one  who  has  ever  seen  the  destruction  of  property  in  a  riot, 
or  the  hounding  of  scabs  by  a  mob,  or  the  unleashing  of  the 
brute  passions  under  the  continued  strain  of  a  great  industrial 
conflict,  can  help  sympathizing  with  both  contentions.    And 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  325 

yet  it  is  probable  that  when  posterity  looks  back  on  the 
struggles  of  our  day,  it  will  judge  that  the  righteous  indigna- 
tion of  these  protests  was  directed  against  a  cause  that  was 
more  righteous  still. 

Law  is  unspeakably  precious.  Order  is  the  daughter  of 
heaven.  Yet  in  practice  law  and  order  are  on  the  side  of 
those  in  possession.  The  men  who  are  out  can  get  in  only 
through  the  disturbance  of  the  order  now  prevailing.  Those 
who  in  the  past  cried  for  law  and  order  at  any  cost  have 
throttled  many  a  new-bom  child  of  justice.  The  aris- 
tocracy and  bureaucracy  of  Russia  are  all  for  law  and  order, 
for  law  and  order  mean  the  old  law  and  their  own  order. 
When  the  German  peasants  in  1525,  betrayed  and  murdered 
by  their  aristocratic  enemies  who  scorned  to  keep  faith  with 
the  canaille,  used  violence  in  turn,  Luther  lost  all  his  former 
faint  sympathy  with  their  fair  demands,  and  called  for  order 
at  any  price.  He  said  they  had  forfeited  all  rights,  and  sum- 
moned the  forces  of  order  to  kill  them  as  one  would  kill 
a  mad  dog.  They  did  it.  The  princes  and  barons,  as- 
sured that  they  were  not  only  protecting  their  class  interest, 
but  serving  God  in  the  bargain,  slaughtered  probably  a  hun- 
dred thousand,  devastated  entire  districts,  broke  the  back- 
bone of  the  German  peasantry,  and  retarded  the  emancipa- 
tion of  a  great  and  worthy  class  by  centuries.  It  was  a  very 
righteous  impulse  with  Luther,  and  yet  we  count  it  one  of  the 
darkest  stains  on  his  life.  That  class  which  he  opposed  in 
the  blind  agony  of  its  emancipation  is  now  rising  to  intelli- 
gence and  power,  and  is  forgetting  all  his  great  merits  for  this 
sin  committed  against  the  common  people.  When  violence 
was  used  during  the  Brooklyn  street-car  strike  in  1895,  an 
eminent  minister    of    that   city   used  words   that   sounded 


326  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

strangely  like  Luther's  fearful  invective,  "If  clubs  wiU  not 
do,  then  bayonets;  if  bayonets  will  not  do,  then  lead;  if 
bullets  will  not  do,  then  Gatling  guns."  He  said  he  was 
willing  to  have  the  churches  turned  into  hospitals  to  see  order 
maintained. 

Freedom,  too,  is  a  holy  word.  The  right  to  labor  is  one  of 
the  fundamental  rights  of  man.  But  the  cry  of  "the  right  to 
work"  in  our  country  has  been  raised  mainly  by  the  employers 
on  behalf  of  those  who  were  willing  to  help  them  in  breaking 
down  the  resistance  of  organized  labor.  Their  interest  seems 
to  be  more  in  the  right  to  be  worked  for  than  in  the  right  to 
work.  Strike-breaking  is  now  a  highly  organized  business, 
and  those  who  do  it  rank  morally  with  the  mercenaries  kept 
by  princes  to  subdue  their  people.  For  those  workmen  who 
under  the  pressure  of  need  break  away  from  the  coherence  of 
their  class  and  take  the  job  which  is  calling  for  them,  the 
situation  is  indeed  terrible.  The  "scab"  may  be  actuated 
by  fine  motives.  He  may  feel  loyalty  to  the  employer  whose 
bread  he  has  long  eaten ;  he  may  be  driven  by  the  hunger  and 
sickness  of  his  family  to  provide  bread  for  them  at  any  cost ; 
or  he  may  disapprove  of  this  strike  or  of  labor-unions  in 
general.  But  he  breaks  down  the  solidarity  of  his  class,  and 
his  class  will  judge  him  by  that  standard  alone. 

There  has  never  been  a  social  class  or  group  which  has  not 
punished  to  the  best  of  its  ability  any  one  who  betrayed  the 
interests  of  the  class,  and  which  did  not  visit  bitterer  con- 
demnation on  those  actions  which  endangered  its  safety  than 
on  any  others.  A  boy  may  steal  apples  and  retain  his  moral 
standing  with  the  other  boys,  but  he  must  not  "tell  on  a 
fellow."  A  cow-boy  could  sin  all  around  the  compass  with 
impunity,  but  if  he  stole  a  horse,  he  was  hung ;  the  safety  of 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  327 

« 

his  class  depended  on  the  security  of  their  horses.  Militarism 
winks  at  gambling  and  lewdness,  but  strikes  relentlessly  at 
insubordination.  The  governing  powers  in  Russia  have  been 
lenient  on  many  things,  but  they  tolerated  no  opinions  which 
undermined  the  moral  foundations  of  the  autocracy.  While 
the  clerical  hierarchy  was  dominant,  it  punished  the  schis- 
matic and  heretic,  for  he  was  the  "scab"  and  "blackleg"  of 
the  Church.  Each  class  regards  the  punishment  visited  on 
its  traitors  as  just  and  natural,  but  regards  with  horror  the 
class  of  offences  punished  by  the  opposing  class  and  its 
methods  of  getting  even  with  its  traitors.  These  observa- 
tions have  held  true  throughout  human  history,  and  have 
been  deeply  influential  in  the  gradual  formation  of  custom- 
ary and  statutory  law. 

The  working  class  is  now  engaged  in  a  great  historic  class 
struggle  which  is  becoming  ever  more  conscious  and  bitter. 
Their  labor  is  all  they  have.  Individually  they  are  helpless. 
Their  only  hope  for  wresting  better  wages  and  conditions 
from  the  other  side  is  in  union  of  action.  With  infinite  effort, 
with  sacrifice  of  time,  money,  and  chances  of  self-advance- 
ment, they  create  organizations  which  obey  discipline  and 
act  together.  Under  certain  circumstances  any  one  breaking 
away  from  their  discipline  may  secure  exceptional  terms  for 
himself,  but  he  does  so  at  the  expense  of  all  the  efforts  which 
the  union  has  put  forth.  Others  are  laboriously  erecting  a 
dam  to  raise  the  water  level  so  that  all  may  irrigate  their 
fields  and  raise  better  crops.  This  man  breaks  through  the 
dam  to  get  an  immediate  supply  for  his  own  field.  If  we 
expect  the  working  class  to  be  patient  with  those  who  sell  out 
the  interest  of  their -class  for  personal  advantage,  and  lend 
themselves  as  tools  to  those  who  seek  to  undermine  the 


328  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

fighting  force  of  the  organization,  we  demand  of  one  of  the 
lowest  groups  of  society  a  moral  magnanimity  and  breadth 
of  view  which  no  other  group  has  ever  shown.  The  great 
sociologist  Schaeffle,  who  was  by  no  means  a  radical,  said, 
"  There  is  nothing  more  brutal  than  a  moneyed  aristocracy  in 
persecuting  those  who  dispute  its  dominion."  The  philosophy 
of  all  class  movements  is  summed  up  in  Kipling's  Jungle 
Law :  *  — 

"  Now  this  is  the  Law  of  the  Jungle  —  as  old  and  as  true  as  the  sky; 
And  the  Wolf  that  shall  keep  it  may  prosper,  but  the  Wolf  that  shall 

break  it  must  die. 
As  the  creeper  that  girdles  the  tree-trunk  the  Law  runneth  forward  and 

back; 
For  the  strength  0}  the  Pack  is  the  Wolf,  and  the  strength  of  the  Wolf  is 

the  Pack. 
Now  these  are  the  Laws  of  the  Jungle,  and  many  and  mighty  are  they; 
But  the  head  and  the  hoof  of  the  Law,  and  the  haimch  and  the  hump  is 

—  'Obey!'" 

In  its  struggle  the  working  class  becomes  keenly  conscious 
of  the  obstacles  put  in  its  way  by  the  great  institutions  of 
society,  the  courts,  the  press,  or  the  Church.  It  demands  not 
only  impartiality,  but  the  kind  of  sympathy  which  will  condone 
its  mistakes  and  discern  the  justice  of  its  cause  in  spite  of  the 
excesses  of  its  followers.  When  our  sympathies  are  enlisted, 
we  develop  a  vast  faculty  for  making  excuses.  If  two  dogs 
fight,  our  own  dog  is  rarely  the  aggressor.  Stealing  peaches  is 
a  boyish  prank  when  our  boy  does  it,  but  petty  larceny  when 
that  dratted  boy  of  our  neighbor  does  it.  If  the  other  political 
party  grafts,  it  is  a  flagrant  shame ;  if  our  own  party  does  it, 
we  regret  it  politely  or  deny  the  fact.  If  Germany  annexes  a 
part  of  Africa,  it  is  brutal  aggression ;  if  England  does  it,  she 

*  Kipling,  "  The  Second  Jungle  Book." 


THE    CHURCH  AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  329 

"fulfils  her  mission  of  civilization."  If  the  business  interests 
exclude  the  competition  of  foreign  merchants  by  a  protective 
tariff,  it  is  a  grand  national  policy ;  if  the  trades-unions  try  to 
exclude  the  competition  of  non-union  labor,  it  is  a  denial  of 
the  right  to  work  and  an  outrage. 

The  working  class  likes  to  get  that  kind  of  sympathy  which 
will  take  a  favorable  view  of  its  efforts  and  its  mistakes,  and 
a  comprehension  of  the  wrongs  under  which  it  suffers.  In- 
stead of  that  the  pulpit  of  late  has  given  its  most  vigorous 
interest  to  the  wrongs  of  those  whom  militant  labor  re- 
gards as  traitors  to  its  cause.  It  has  been  more  concerned 
with  the  fact  that  some  individuals  were  barred  from  a  job 
by  the  unions,  than  with  the  fact  that  the  entire  wage-work- 
ing class  is  debarred  from  the  land,  from  the  tools  of  pro- 
duction, and  from  their  fair  share  in  the  proceeds  of  produc- 
tion. 

It  cannot  well  be  denied  that  there  is  an  increasing  aliena- 
tion between  the  working  class  and  the  churches.^  That 
alienation  is  most  complete  wherever  our  industrial  develop- 
ment has  advanced  farthest  and  has  created  a  distinct  class 
of  wage-workers.  Several  causes  have  contributed.  Many 
have  dropped  away  because  they  cannot  afford  to  take  their 
share  in  the  expensive  maintenance  of  a  church  in  a  large  city. 
Others  because  the  tone,  the  spirit,  the  point  of  view  in  the 
churches,  is  that  of  another  social  class.  The  commercial 
and  professional  classes  dominate  the  spiritual  atmosphere 
in  the  large  city  churches.  As  the  workingmen  grow  more 
class-conscious,  they  come  to  regard  the  business  men  as  their 
antagonists  and  the  possessing  classes  as  exploiters  who  live 

*  On  the  extent  and  causes  of  this  alienation  see  Richard  Heath's  "  Captive 
City  of  God." 


330  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

on  their  labor,  and  they  resent  it  when  persons  belonging  to 
these  classes  address  them  with  the  tone  of  moral  superiority. 
When  ministers  handle  the  labor  question,  they  often  seem 
to  the  working  class  partial  against  them  even  when  the 
ministers  think  they  are  most  impartial.  Foreign  workingmen 
bring  with  them  the  long-standing  distrust  for  the  clergy  and 
the  Church  as  tools  of  oppression  which  they  have  learned 
abroad,  and  they  perpetuate  that  attitude  here.  The  churches 
of  America  suffer  for  the  sins  of  the  churches  abroad.  The 
\y  "scientific  socialism"  imported  from  older  countries  through 
its  literature  and  its  advocates  is  saturated  with  materialistic 
philosophy  and  is  apt  to  create  dislike  and  antagonism  for  the 
ideas  and  institutions  of  religion. 

Thus  in  spite  of  the  favorable  equipment  of  the  Church 
in  America  there  is  imminent  danger  that  the  working  people 
will  pass  from  indifference  to  hostility,  from  religious  enthu- 
siasm to  anti-religious  bitterness.  That  would  be  one  of 
the  most  unspeakable  calamities  that  could  come  upon  the 
Church.  If  we  would  only  take  warning  by  the  fate  of  the 
churches  in  Europe,  we  might  avert  the  desolation  that 
threatens  us.  We  may  well  be  glad  that  in  nearly  every 
city  there  are  a  few  ministers  who  are  known  as  the  out- 
spoken friends  of  labor.  Their  fellow-ministers  may  regard 
them  as  radicals,  lacking  in  balance,  and  very  likely  they 
are;  but  in  the  present  situation  they  are  among  the  most 
valuable  servants  of  the  Church.  The  workingmen  see  that 
there  is  at  least  a  minority  in  the  Church  that  champions 
their  cause,  and  that  fact  helps  to  keep  their  judgment  in 
hopeful  suspense  about  the  Church  at  large.  Men  who  are 
just  as  one-sided  in  favor  of  capitalism  pass  as  sane  and 
conservative  men.     If  the  capitalist  class  have  their  court- 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  33 1 

chaplains,  it  is  only  fair  that  the  army  of  labor  should  have 
its  army-chaplains  who  administer  the  consolations  of  reli- 
gion to  militant  labor. 

Thus  the  Church  has  a  tremendous  stake  in  the  social 
crisis.  It  may  try  to  maintain  an  attitude  of  neutrality,  but 
neither  side  will  permit  it.  If  it  is  quiescent,  it  thereby  throws 
its  influence  on  the  side  of  things  as  they  are,  and  the  class 
which  aspires  to  a  fitter  place  in  the  organization  of  society 
will  feel  the  great  spiritual  force  of  the  Church  as  a  dead 
weight  against  it.  If  it  loses  the  loyalty  and  trust  of  the 
working  class,  it  loses  the  very  class  in  which  it  originated,  to 
which  its  founders  belonged,  and  which  has  lifted  it  to  power. 
If  it  becomes  a  religion  of  the  upper  classes,  it  condemns  itself 
to  a  slow  and  comfortable  death.  Protestantism  from  the 
outset  entered  into  an  intimate  alliance  with  the  intelligence 
and  wealth  of  the  city  population.  As  the  cities  grew  in  im- 
portance since  the  Reformation,  as  commerce  overshadowed 
agriculture,  and  as  the  business  class  crowded  the  feudal 
aristocracy  out  of  its  leading  position  since  the  French 
Revolution,  Protestantism  throve  with  the  class  which  had 
espoused  it.  It  lifted  its  class,  and  its  class  lifted  it.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Anabaptist  movement  in  Germany,  which 
propagated  within  the  lower  classes,  was  crushed  with  the 
class  that  bore  its  banner.  If  the  present  class  struggle  of  the 
wage-workers  is  successful,  and  they  become  the  dominant 
class  of  the  future,  any  rehgious  ideas  and  institutions  which 
they  now  embrace  in  the  heat  of  their  struggle  will  rise  to 
power  with  them,  and  any  institution  on  which  they  turn 
their  back  is  hkely  to  find  itself  in  the  cold.  The  parable  of 
the  Wise  and  Foolish  Virgins  holds  of  entire  nations  and 
institutions  as  well  as  of  individuals. 


332  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

The  for-  We  have  seen  that  the  crisis  of  society  is  also  the  crisis  of 

tTthe*^^  the  Church.  The  Church,  too,  feels  the  incipient  paralysis 
Church.  that  is  creeping  upon  our  splendid  Christian  civilization 
through  the  unjust  absorption  of  wealth  on  one  side  and  the 
poverty  of  the  people  on  the  other.  It  cannot  thrive  when 
society  decays.  Its  wealth,  its  independence,  its  ministry, 
its  social  hold,  its  spiritual  authority,  are  threatened  in  a 
hundred  ways. 

But  on  the  other  hand  the  present  crisis  presents  one  of  the 
greatest  opportunities  for  its  own  growth  and  development 
that  have  ever  been  offered  to  Christianity.  The  present 
historical  situation  is  a  high  summons  of  the  Eternal  to  enter 
on  a  larger  duty,  and  thereby  to  inherit  a  larger  life. 

In  all  the  greatest  forward  movements  of  humanity,  religion 
has  been  one  of  the  driving  forces.  The  dead  weight  of  hoary 
institutions  and  the  resistance  of  the  caked  and  incrusted 
customs  and  ideas  of  the  past  are  so  great  that  unless  the 
dormant  energies  of  the  people  are  awakened  by  moral  en- 
thusiasm and  religious  faith,  the  old  triumphs  over  the  new. 
"Mighty  Truth's  yet  mightier  man-child"  comes  to  the  hour 
of  birth,  but  there  is  no    trength  to  bring  forth. 

But  in  turn  the  greatest  forward  movements  in  religion 
have  always  taken  place  under  the  call  of  a  great  historical 
situation.  Religious  movements  of  the  first  magnitude  are 
seldom  purely  religious  in  their  origin  and  character.  It  is 
when  nations  throb  with  patriotic  fervor,  with  social  indig- 
nation, with  the  keen  joy  of  new  intellectual  light,  with  the 
vastness  and  fear  of  untried  conditions,  when  "the  energy 
sublime  of  a  century  bursts  full-blossomed  on  the  thorny  stem 
of  Time,"  that  religion,  too,  will  rise  to  a  new  epoch  in  its 
existence. 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  333 

The  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  is  a  classical 
illustration  of  this  fact.  The  popular  view  which  regards  it 
first  of  all  as  a  restoration  of  evangelical  doctrine  on  the  basis 
of  the  open  Bible  is  almost  wholly  misleading,^  The  Refor- 
mation had  been  gathering  headway  for  four  years  before 
Luther  put  his  hand  to  the  translation  of  the  Bible,  and  then 
he  had  no  clear  foresight  of  the  importance  of  that  work. 
He  nailed  up  his  Theses  on  indulgences  in  151 7,  but  he  did 
not  begin  to  attack  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  till  1520. 
The  prime  cause  of  the  Reformation  was  the  smouldering 
anger  of  the  Northern  nations  at  their  financial  exploitation 
by  the  Italian  papacy.  Luther's  great  manifesto  "to  the 
Christian  Nobility  of  Germany"  was  a  tremendous  social, 
educational,  and  ecclesiastical  reform  programme.  He  se- 
cured the  support  of  the  princes  and  nobles  because  he  said 
with  a  thundering  voice  what  all  felt  about  the  extortion  and 
oppression  of  the  ecclesiastical  machine.  At  the  Diet  of 
Worms  in  1521  nearly  all  the  German  estates  were  friendly 
to  him,  but  they  cared  nothing  for  his  doctrinal  differences, 
and  would  have  been  best  pleased  if  he  had  abjured  them. 
The  glorious  years  of  the  Lutheran  Reformation  were  from 
1517  to  1525,  when  the  whole  nation  was  in  commotion  and 
a  great  revolutionary  tidal  wave  seemed  to  be  sweeping  every 
class  and  every  higher  interest  one  step  nearer  to  its  ideal  of 
life.  The  mightiest  years  in  the  life  of  Luther  were  those 
same  years  when  he  was  the  spokesman  of  an  awakened 

*  H.  C.  Lea,  "Cambridge  Modem  History,"  I,  653:  "The  religious 
changes  incident  to  the  Reformation  .  .  .  were  not  the  object  sought,  but 
the  means  for  attaining  that  object.  .  .  .  The  overthrow  of  dogma  was  the 
only  way  to  obtain  permanent  relief  from  the  intolerable  abuses  of  the  exist- 
ing ecclesiastical  system."  This  statement  is  extreme,  but  it  is  nearer  the 
truth  than  the  popular  view. 


334  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

nation  and  grappled  fearlessly  with  all  the  problems  of 
human  life.^  Then  came  the  reactionary  turn  in  his  life. 
He  feared  the  spirit  which  he  had  helped  to  evoke.  He  dis- 
avowed the  cause  of  the  lower  classes,  distrusted  the  common 
people  in  Church  and  State,  alienated  their  love  and  trust, 
and  strengthened  the  wealth  and  power  of  the  princes.  By 
his  theological  dogmatism  he  repelled  the  men  who  had  fought 
with  him  in  the  interests  of  education  and  science,  and  the 
Swiss  reformers  who  differed  with  him  on  points  of  doctrine. 
He  had  been  the  leader  of  a  nation ;  now  he  became  the  head 
of  a  sect.  The  Lutheran  Reformation  had  been  most  truly 
religious  and  creative  when  it  embraced  the  whole  of  human 
life  and  enlisted  the  enthusiasm  of  all  ideal  men  and  move- 
ments. When  it  became  "religious"  in  the  narrower  sense, 
it  grew  scholastic  and  spiny,  quarrelsome,  and  impotent  to 
awaken  high  enthusiasm  and  noble  life.  The  sceptre  of 
leadership  passed  from  Lutheranism  to  Calvinism  and  to 
regenerated  Catholicism.  Calvinism  had  a  far  wider  sphere 
of  influence  and  a  far  deeper  effect  on  the  life  of  the  na- 
tions than  Lutheranism,  because  it  continued  to  fuse  reli- 
gious faith  with  the  demand  for  political  liberty  and  social 
justice. 

Similarly  the  religious  reform  movements  of  the  Middle 
Ages  were  very  closely  connected  with  wider  social  causes: 
the  changes  created  by  the  crusades,  the  consequent  rise  of 
commerce,  the  growth  of  luxury,  the  transition  to  a  money 
basis  in  industry,  the  rise  of  the  cities  and  the  development  of 
a  new  city  proletariat.  The  movement  of  Francis  of  Assisi, 
of  the  Waldenses,  of  the  Humiliati  and  Bons  Hommes,  were 
all  inspired  by  democratic  and  communistic  ideals.     Wiclif 

1  Harnack,  "History  of  Dogma,"  VII,  i68  ff. 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  335 

was  by  far  the  greatest  doctrinal  reformer  before  the  Reforma- 
tion ;  but  his  eyes,  too,  were  first  opened  to  the  doctrinal 
errors  of  the  Roman  Church  by  joining  in  a  great  national 
and  patriotic  movement  against  the  alien  domination  and  ex- 
tortion of  the  Church.  The  Bohemian  revolt,  made  famous 
by  the  name  of  John  Hus,  was  quite  as  much  political  and 
social  as  religious.  Savonarola  was  a  great  democrat  as  well 
as  a  religious  prophet.  In  his  famous  interview  with  the 
dying  Lorenzo  de'  Medici  he  made  three  demands  as  a  con- 
dition for  granting  absolution.^  Of  the  man  he  demanded  a 
living  faith  in  God 's  mercy.  Of  the  millionnaire  he  demanded 
restitution  of  his  ill-gotten  wealth.  Of  the  political  usurper 
he  demanded  the  restoration  of  the  liberties  of  the  people  of 
Florence.  It  is  significant  that  the  dying  sinner  found  it  easy 
to  assent  to  the  first,  hard  to  consent  to  the  second,  and  im- 
possible to  concede  the  last. 

Nations  rise  to  the  climax  of  their  life,  and  humanity 
unfolds  its  enormous  dormant  capacities  only  when  rehgion 
enters  into  a  living  and  inspiring  relation  to  all  the  rest  of 
human  life.  Under  an  impulse  which  was  both  religious  and 
national  the  little  Netherlands,  hardly  three  million  people 
on  marshy  soil,  resisted  the  greatest  and  richest  and  most 
relentless  power  of  Europe  for  eighty  years,  leaped  to  the  van 
of  European  sea  power,  and  became  the  leader  in  the  great 
political  coalitions  of  Europe.  Under  the  same  unity  of 
religious  and  political  enthusiasm  Sweden,  with  only  a  mill- 
ion men  on  rocky  and  snow-bound  soil,  came  to  the  rescue 
of  Protestantism  under  Gustavus  Adolphus  and  dictated 
terms  to  Europe.  England  would  have  been  glad  to  help, 
but  was  held  down  by  the  selfish  dynastic  policy  of  James  I. 
•  Villari,  "Life  and  Times  of  Savonarola,"  I,  148. 


336  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

When  the  religious  enthusiasm  of  the  English  did  get  a  grip 
on  the  political  machinery,  it  made  England  great.  It  de- 
veloped an  incomparable  army,  inspired  a  rough  country 
gentleman  to  be  the  greatest  ruler  England  has  ever  had, 
raised  up  such  statesmen,  and  evoked  such  political  ideas  that 
England  ever  since  has  been  carrying  out  the  conceptions 
then  bom.  The  Puritan  Revolution  was  the  starting-point 
of  modem  democracy. 

Thus  in  past  history  religion  has  demonstrated  its  capacity 
to  evoke  the  latent  powers  of  humanity,  and  has  in  turn 
gained  a  fresh  hold  on  men  and  rejuvenated  its  own  life  by 
supporting  the  high  patriotic  and  social  ambitions  of  an  age. 
We,  too,  are  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  historical  movement.  The 
historians  of  the  future  will  rank  it  second  to  none.  It  is 
one  of  the  tides  in  the  affairs  of  men.  If  rightly  directed,  a 
Kttle  effort  in  this  time  of  malleable  heat  will  shape  human- 
ity for  good  more  than  huge  labor  when  the  iron  is  cold.  If 
Christianity  would  now  add  its  moral  force  to  the  social  and 
economic  forces  making  for  a  nobler  organization  of  society, 
it  could  render  such  help  to  the  cause  of  justice  and  the  people 
as  would  make  this  a  proud  page  in  the  history  of  the  Church 
for  our  sons  to  read.  And  in  turn  the  sweep  and  thrill  of  such 
a  great  cause  would  lift  the  Church  beyond  its  own  narrow- 
ness. If  it  would  stake  its  life  in  this  cause  of  God,  it  would 
gain  its  life.  If  it  follows  the  ways  of  profit  and  prudence,  it 
will  find  its  wisdom  foolishness.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
modem  foreign  missionary  movement  the  Church  was  full  of 
timid  scruples  about  its  call  and  its  ability  for  such  a  work. 
To-day  there  are  few  things  in  the  life  of  the  Church  which 
so  inspire  its  finest  sons  and  daughters  and  so  intensify  the 
Christ-spirit  in  its  whole  body  as  this  movement  in  which  it 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  337 

seems  to  scatter  its  strength  abroad.  If  the  social  move- 
ment were  undertaken  in  a  similar  spirit  of  religious  faith 
and  daring,  it  would  have  a  similar  power  to  rechristianize 
the  Church. 

Individuals  have  long  felt  the  enlarging  and  uplifting  touch 
of  the  wider  mission  of  the  Church  to  society,  and  furnish  a 
demonstration  in  their  lives  of  the  effect  which  such  a  Christ- 
like task  would  have  on  the  Church  at  large.  That  quicken- 
ing effect  is  sometimes  met  in  the  most  unexpected  places. 
For  instance,  one  of  the  influences  which  put  fire  and  passion 
into  the  heart  of  Dwight  L.  Moody  was  the  reading  of  the 
life  of  the  Italian  revolutionist  Garibaldi.  What  movement 
would  seem  more  purely  religious  than  the  Welsh  Revival  of 
1904?  Yet  it  was  kindled  by  a  revelation  of  human  democ- 
racy. At  Hafod,  on  December  16,  1904,  Evan  Roberts  told 
how  the  revival  first  reached  him.  One  evening  while  at 
Loughor  he  walked  from  his  home  down  to  the  post-office 
and  on  his  way  passed  a  gypsy  woman,  who  saluted  him  with 
" Good  evening,  sir."  Her  use  of  "sir"  in  addressing  a  mere 
miner  went  straight  to  his  heart,  and  he  asked  himself  why 
he  had  not  said  "Good  evening,  madam,"  to  the  gypsy. 
"  From  that  moment  I  felt  that  my  heart  was  full  of  the  divine 
love  and  that  I  could  love  the  whole  world,  irrespective  of 
color,  creed,  or  nationality."  ^ 

In  our  study  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets  we  saw  that 
it  was  their  participation  and  leadership  in  a  national  and 
patriotic  movement  which  first  lifted  the  prophets  of  Israel 
above  the  level  of  the  professional  soothsayers  and  mantic 
clairvoyants  of  which  the  surrounding  nations  had  plenty. 

*  From  a  pamphlet  published  by  the  "Western  Mail"  of  Cardiff,  and 
giving  current  reports  of  the  meetings  in  Wales. 
z 


338  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

It  is  still  true  that  the  wider  social  outlook  is  almost  in- 
variably the  condition  for  the  prophetic  gift.  The  men  of 
our  own  age  who  have  had  something  of  the  prophet's  vision 
and  power  of  language  and  inspiration  have  nearly  all  had 
the  social  enthusiasm  and  faith  in  the  reconstructive  power 
of  Christianity.  Maurice  and  Kingsley,  Ruskin  and  Carlyle, 
Lamennais  and  Mazzini  and  Tolstoi,  were  true  seers  of  God, 
and  they  made  others  see.  On  the  other  hand,  individualistic 
evangelicalism,  while  rich  in  men  of  piety  and  evangelistic 
fervor,  has  been  singularly  poor  in  the  prophetic  gift.  It  has 
not  even  welcomed  prophets  when  they  did  appear.  It  has 
had  so  little  real  understanding  of  the  ways  of  God  in  con- 
temporary history  that  it  has  misinterpreted  many  of  his 
greatest  acts  completely.  The  French  Revolution  has  long 
been  viewed  with  horror  by  it  as  an  anti-Christian  fury  which 
could  be  explained  only  on  the  supposition  of  Satanic  agencies. 
The  mechanical  schemes  borrowed  from  Jewish  apoca- 
lypticism are  its  nearest  approach  to  an  interpretation  of 
current  history  from  the  point  of  view  of  God.  Religious 
individualism  lacks  the  triumphant  faith  in  the  possible  sov- 
ereignty of  Jesus  Christ  in  all  human  affairs,  and  therefore 
it  lacks  the  vision  and  the  herald  voice  to  see  and  proclaim 
his  present  conquest  and  enthronement.  It  lacks  that  vital 
interest  in  the  total  of  human  life  which  can  create  a  united 
and  harmonious  and  daring  religious  conception  of  the  world. 
To  those  Christian  men  who  have  that  to-day  it  has  usually 
come  either  along  the  avenue  of  world-wide  missions  or  of 
the  social  movement. 

"  No  religion  gains  by  the  lapse  of  time ;  it  only  loses.  Un- 
less new  storms  pass  over  it  and  cleanse  it,  it  will  be  stifled 
in  its  own  dry  foliage."     Men  are  so  afraid  of  religious 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  339 

vagaries,  and  so  little  afraid  of  religious  stagnation.  Yet 
the  religion  of  Jesus  has  less  to  fear  from  sitting  down  to 
meat  with  publicans  and  sinners  than  from  the  immaculate 
isolation  of  the  Pharisees.  It  will  take  care  of  itself  if  mixed 
into  the  three  measures  of  meal ;  but  if  the  leaven  is  kept 
standing  by  itself,  it  will  sour  hopelessly.  If  the  Church  tries 
to  confine  itself  to  theology  and  the  Bible,  and  refuses  its 
larger  mission  to  humanity,  its  theology  will  gradually  be- 
come mythology  and  its  Bible  a  closed  book.  "There  is  no 
creature  more  fatal  than  your  pedant;  safe  as  he  esteems 
himself,  the  terriblest  issues  spring  from  him.  Human  crimes 
are  many,  but  the  crime  of  being  deaf  to  God's  voice,  of  being 
blind  to  all  but  parchments  and  antiquarian  rubrics  when  the 
divine  handwriting  is  abroad  on  the  sky  —  certainly  there 
is  no  crime  which  the  Supreme  Powers  do  more  terribly 
avenge  1" ^ 

The  gospel,  to  have  full  power  over  an  age,  must  be  the 
highest  expression  of  the  moral  and  religious  truths  held  by 
that  age.  If  it  lags  behind  and  deals  in  outgrown  concep- 
tions of  life  and  duty,  it  will  lose  power  over  the  ablest  minds 
and  the  young  men  first,  and  gradually  over  all.  In  our 
thought  to-day  the  social  problems  irresistibly  take  the  lead. 
If  the  Church  has  no  live  and  bold  thought  on  this  dominant 
question  of  modem  life,  its  teaching  authority  on  all  other 
questions  will  dwindle  and  be  despised.  It  cannot  afford  to 
have  young  men  sniff  the  air  as  in  a  stuffy  room  when  they 
enter  the  sphere  of  religious  thought.  When  the  world  is  in 
travail  with  a  higher  ideal  of  justice,  the  Church  dare  not  ig- 
nore it  if  it  would  retain  its  moral  leadership.    On  the  other 

*  Carlyle,  "Oliver  Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches,"  Part  VI,  in  the 
beginning. 


340  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

hand,  if  the  Church  does  incorporate  the  new  social  terms 
in  its  synthesis  of  truth,  they  are  certain  to  throw  new  light 
on  all  the  older  elements  of  its  teaching.  The  conception  of 
race  sin  and  race  salvation  become  comprehensible  once  more 
to  those  who  have  made  the  idea  of  social  solidarity  in  good 
and  evil  a  part  of  their  thought.  The  law  of  sacrifice  loses 
its  arbitrary  and  mechanical  aspect  when  we  understand  the 
vital  union  of  all  humanity.  Individualistic  Christianity  has 
almost  lost  sight  of  the  great  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
which  was  the  inspiration  and  centre  of  the  thought  of  Jesus. 
Social  Christianity  would  once  more  enable  us  to  understand 
the  purpose  and  thought  of  Jesus  and  take  the  veil  from  our 
eyes  when  we  read  the  synoptic  gospels. 

The  social  crisis  offers  a  great  opportunity  for  the  infusion 
of  new  life  and  power  into  the  religious  thought  of  the  Church. 
It  also  offers  the  chance  for  progress  in  its  life.  When  the 
broader  social  outlook  widens  the  purpose  of  a  Christian  man 
beyond  the  increase  of  his  church,  he  lifts  up  his  eyes  and 
sees  that  there  are  others  who  are  at  work  for  humanity  be- 
sides his  denomination.  Common  work  for  social  welfare  is 
the  best  common  ground  for  the  various  religious  bodies  and 
the  best  training  school  for  practical  Christian  unity.  The 
strong  movement  for  Christian  union  in  our  country  has 
been  largely  prompted  by  the  realization  of  social  needs,  and 
is  led  by  men  who  have  felt  the  attraction  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  as  something  greater  than  any  denomination  and  as 
the  common  object  of  all.  Thus  the  divisions  which  were 
caused  in  the  past  by  differences  in  dogma  and  church  polity 
may  perhaps  be  healed  by  unity  of  interest  in  social  salva- 
tion. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  industrial  and  commercial  life  to-day 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT  341 

is  dominated  by  principles  antagonistic  to  the  fundamental 
principles  of  Christianity,  and  it  is  so  dij65cult  to  live  a  Chris- 
tian life  in  the  midst  of  it  that  few  men  even  try.  If  pro- 
duction could  be  organized  on  a  basis  of  cooperative  fra- 
ternity ;  if  distribution  could  at  least  approximately  be  deter- 
mined by  justice;  if  all  men  could  be  conscious  that  their 
labor  contributed  to  the  welfare  of  all  and  that  their  personal 
well-being  was  dependent  on  the  prosperity  of  the  Common- 
wealth; if  predatory  business  and  parasitic  wealth  ceased 
and  all  men  lived  only  by  their  labor;  if  the  luxury  of  un- 
earned wealth  no  longer  made  us  all  feverish  with  covetous- 
ness  and  a  simpler  life  became  the  fashion ;  if  our  time  and 
strength  were  not  used  up  either  in  getting  a  bare  living  or 
in  amassing  unusable  wealth  and  we  had  more  leisure  for 
the  higher  pursuits  of  the  mind  and  the  soul  —  then  there 
might  be  a  chance  to  live  such  a  life  of  gentleness  and  brotherly 
kindness  and  tranquillity  of  heart  as  Jesus  desired  for  men. 
It  may  be  that  the  cooperative  Commonwealth  would  give  us 
the  first  chance  in  history  to  live  a  really  Christian  life  with- 
out retiring  from  the  world,  and  would  make  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  a  philosophy  of  life  feasible  for  all  who  care  to 

try. 

This  is  the  stake  of  the  Church  in  the  social  crisis.  If 
society  continues  to  disintegrate  and  decay,  the  Church  will 
be  carried  down  with  it.  If  the  Church  can  rally  such  moral 
forces  that  injustice  will  be  overcome  and  fresh  red  blood 
will  course  in  a  sounder  social  organism,  it  wiU  itself  rise  to 
higher  liberty  and  life.  Doing  the  will  of  God  it  will  have 
new  visions  of  God.  With  a  new  message  will  come  a  new 
authority.  If  the  salt  lose  its  saltness,  it  will  be  trodden  under 
foot.     If  the  Church  fulfils  its  prophetic  functions,  it  may 


342  CHRISTIANITY    AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

bear  the  prophet's  reproach  for  a  time,  but  it  will  have  the 
prophet's  vindication  thereafter. 

The  conviction  has  always  been  embedded  in  the  heart  of 
the  Church  that  "the  world  "  —  society  as  it  is  —  is  evil  and 
some  time  is  to  make  way  for  a  true  human  society  in  which 
the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  shall  rule.  For  fifteen  hundred 
years  those  who  desired  to  live  a  truly  Christian  life  with- 
drew from  the  evil  world  to  live  a  life  apart.  But  the  prin- 
ciple of  such  an  ascetic  departure  from  the  world  is  dead  in 
modem  life.  There  are  only  two  other  possibilities.  The 
Church  must  either  condemn  the  world  and  seek  to  change 
it,  or  tolerate  the  world  and  conform  to  it.  In  the  latter  case 
it  surrenders  its  holiness  and  its  mission.  The  other  possi- 
bility has  never  yet  been  tried  with  full  faith  on  a  large  scale. 
All  the  leadings  of  God  in  contemporary  history  and  all  the 
promptings  of  Christ's  spirit  in  our  hearts  urge  us  to  make  the 
trial.     On  this  choice  is  staked  the  future  of  the  Church. 


CHAPTER  Vn 

WHAT   TO   DO 

We  rest  our  case.  We  have  seen  that  in  the  prophetic 
rehgion  of  the  Old  Testament  and  in  the  aims  of  Jesus 
Christ  the  reconstruction  of  the  whole  of  human  Hfe  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  will  of  God  and  under  the  motive  power 
of  religion  was  the  ruling  purpose.  Primitive  Christianity, 
while  under  the  fresh  impulse  of  Jesus,  was  filled  with  social 
forces.  In  its  later  history  the  reconstructive  capacities  of 
Christianity  were  paralyzed  by  alien  influences,  but  through 
the  evolution  of  the  Christian  spirit  in  the  Church  it  has  now 
arrived  at  a  stage  in  its  development  where  it  is  fit  and  free 
for  its  largest  social  mission.  At  the  same  time  Christian 
civilization  has  arrived  at  the  great  crisis  of  its  history  and 
is  in  the  most  urgent  need  of  all  moral  power  to  overcome 
the  wrongs  which  have  throttled  other  nations  and  civiliza- 
tions. The  Church,  too,  has  its  own  power  and  future  at 
stake  in  the  issues  of  social  development.  Thus  the  will  of 
God  revealed  in  Christ  and  in  the  highest  manifestations  of 
the  religious  spirit,  the  call  of  human  duty,  and  the  motives 
of  seK-protection,  alike  summon  Christian  men  singly  and 
collectively  to  put  their  hands  to  the  plough  and  not  to  look 
back  till  public  morality  shall  be  at  least  as  much  Chris- 
tianized as  private  morality  now  is. 

The  question  then  immediately  confronts  us :  What  social 

343 


V"    V 


344  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

changes  would  be  involved  in  such  a  religious  reorganization 
of  life?  What  institutions  and  practices  of  our  present  life 
would  have  to  cease?  What  new  elements  would  have  to 
be  embodied  ?  What  social  ideal  should  be  the  ultimate  aim 
of  Christian  men,  and  what  practical  means  and  policies 
should  they  use  for  its  attainment? 

These  questions  exceed  the  scope  of  this  book.  This  clos- 
ing chapter  will  merely  undertake  to  suggest  in  what  ways 
the  moral  forces  latent  in  Christian  society  can  be  aroused 
and  mobilized  for  the  progressive  regeneration  of  social 
life,  and  in  what  chief  directions  these  forces  should  be 
exerted. 

"No  Thor-      There  are  certain  lines  of  endeavor  which  lead  nowhere. 

oughfare." 

Christian  men  have  again  and  again  attempted  to  find  the 

way  out  of  the  maze  in  these  directions,  but  experience  has 
set  up  the  sign,  "No  Thoroughfare." 

One  of  these  futile  efforts  is  the  attempt  to  make  economic 
development  revert  to  earlier  stages.  Christian  men  of  con- 
servative spirit  recoil  from  the  swift  pace  and  impersonal 
hugeness  of  modem  industry  and  look  back  to  the  simpler 
processes  and  more  personal  contact  between  master  and 
men  as  a  better  and  more  Christian  social  life.  The  per- 
sonal interest  of  the  intelligent  Christian  middle  class  is  likely 
to  run  in  the  same  direction.  Thus  in  our  country  we  have 
the  outcry  of  that  class  against  the  trusts  and  the  department 
</  stores,  and  the  insistence  on  returning  to  the  simple  competi- 
tion of  small  concerns.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  such 
return  would  be  permanent.  These  great  industrial  under- 
takings extend  the  area  within  which  cooperation  and  the 
correlation  of  forces  rule,  and  competition  is  no  match  for 


WHAT   TO    DO  345 

cooperation.  Our  effort  must  rather  be  to  preserve  all  the 
benefits  which  the  elaboration  of"  the  productive  machinery 
has  worked  out,  but  to  make  these  benefits  enrich  the  many 
instead  of  the  few.  Reform  movements  arising  among  the 
business  class  are  often  reactionary;  they  seek  to  revert  to 
outgrown  conditions  and  turn  the  shadow  on  the  dial  back- 
ward. Socialism  is  almost  unique  in  accepting  as  inevitable 
and  desirable  the  essential  achievements  of  industrial  organi- 
zation, but  only  as  halfway  stages  toward  a  vaster  and  a 
far  juster  social  system. 

For  the  same  reasons  it  is  futile  to  attempt  to  reform  mod- 
em society  on  bibhcal  models.  The  principle  underlying  the 
Mosaic  land  system  is  wholly  right.  The  spirit  pen^ading 
the  Hebrew  laws  protecting  the  laborer  and  the  poor  is  so 
tender  and  noble  that  it  puts  us  to  shame.  But  these  legal 
prescriptions  were  adjusted  to  an  agricultural  and  stationary 
population,  organized  under  patriarchal  and  tribal  coherence, 
and  they  would  be  wholly  unworkable  under  modem  condi- 
tions. It  is  rather  our  business  to  catch  the  bold  and  humane 
spirit  of  the  prophetic  tribunes  of  the  people  and  do  as  well 
in  our  day  as  they  did  in  theirs.  Nothing  could  be  more 
valuable  than  to  understand  the  social  contents  of  the  Bible 
in  their  historical  setting,  and  press  home  on  the  Christian 
Church  the  essential  purpose  and  direction  of  its  own  in- 
spired book.  But  here,  too,  it  is  true  that  "the  letter  killeth; 
it  is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth." 

One  of  the  most  persistent  mistakes  of  Christian  men  has 
been  to  postpone  social  regeneration  to  a  future  era  to  be 
inaugurated  by  the  return  of  Christ.  In  former  chapters  the 
origin  of  this  hope  and  its  original  beauty  and  power  have 
been  discussed.    It  was  at  the  outset  a  triumphant  assertion 


346  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

of  faith  against  apparent  impossibilities.  It  still  enshrines 
the  social  hope  of  Christianity  and  concedes  that  some  time 
the  social  life  of  men  is  to  pass  through  a  radical  change  and 
be  ruled  by  Christ.  But  the  element  of  postponement  in  it 
to-day  means  a  lack  of  faith  in  the  present  power  of  Christ 
and  paralyzes  the  religious  initiative.  It  ignores  the  revela- 
tion of  God  contained  in  nineteen  centuries  of  continuous 
history.  It  is  careful  not  to  see  the  long  succession  of  men 
and  churches  and  movements  that  staked  all  their  hopes 
and  all  their  chances  of  social  improvement  on  this  expecta- 
tion and  were  disappointed.  It  is  true  that  any  regenera- 
tion of  society  can  come  only  through  the  act  of  God  and  the 
presence  of  Christ ;  but  God  is  now  acting,  and  Christ  is  now 
here.  To  assert  that  means  not  less  faith,  but  more.  It  is 
true  that  any  effort  at  social  regeneration  is  dogged  by  per- 
petual relapses  and  doomed  forever  to  fall  short  of  its  aim. 
But  the  same  is  true  of  our  personal  efforts  to  live  a  Christ- 
like  life ;  it  is  true,  also,  of  every  local  church,  and  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  Church  at  large.  Whatever  argument  would  de- 
mand the  postponement  of  social  regeneration  to  a  future  era 
will  equally  demand  the  postponement  of  personal  holiness 
to  a  future  life.  We  must  have  the  faith  of  the  apostolic 
Church  in  the  triumph  of  Christ  over  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world,  plus  the  knowledge  which  nineteen  centuries  of  his- 
tory have  given  to  us.  Unless  we  add  that  knowledge,  the 
faith  of  the  apostles  becomes  our  unbelief. 

Another  cul-de-sac  of  Christian  endeavor  is  the  organiza- 
tion of  communistic  colonies.  There  is  no  reason  why  a 
number  of  Christian  people  should  not  live  in  commons  or 
organize  for  cooperative  production  if  they  can  hope  to  make 
their  life  more  comfortable,  more  free  from  care,  and  more 


WHAT   TO    DO  347 

moral  in  its  relations.  But  past  experience  does  not  show 
that  such  colonies  served  to  Christianize  social  Ufe  at  large. 
The  example  is  not  widely  contagious,  even  if  the  colony  is 
successful.  If  the  experiment  fails  through  any  of  a  hun- 
dred practical  causes,  its  failure  is  heralded  as  a  convincing 
demonstration  that  competition  is  the  only  orthodox  and 
successful  basis  of  society.  Settlements  with  some  com- 
munistic features  are  likely  to  increase  in  the  future  as  the 
eyes  of  cultured  people  are  opened  to  the  wastefulness  and 
unhappiness  of  ordinary  life,  and  they  may  be  exceedingly 
useful  if  they  gather  like-minded  men  and  women  in  groups, 
and  thus  intensify  and  clarify  their  convictions  by  intercourse. 
But  they  will  be  influential  on  a  large  scale  only  if  the  ideas 
and  experiences  wrought  out  in  these  settlements  find  channels 
to  run  out  freely  into  the  general  unregenerate  life  through 
books,  newspapers,  or  lectures  issuing  from  the  settlement. 
In  the  main,  the  salt  of  the  earth  will  do  its  work  best  if  it  is 
not  stored  in  casks  by  itself,  but  rubbed  in  evenly  and  gen- 
erously where  it  is  most  needed.  The  mass  of  society  will 
ponderously  move  an  inch  where  a  select  colony  might  spurt 
a  mile  toward  the  future ;  but  the  total  gain  in  foot-pounds 
will  be  greater  in  the  mass-movement.  The  cooperative 
stores  in  England  and  on  the  continent  are  a  far  more  hope- 
ful and  influential  education  in  the  cooperative  principle  than 
the  communistic  colonies  have  been,  because  they  are  built 
into  the  mass  of  the  general  Hfe. 

If  the  Church  should  in  the  future  really  seek  to  Chris- 
tianize social  life,  it  will  almost  certainly  be  tempted  to  make 
itself  the  chief  agent  and  beneficiary  of  the  process.  Attempts 
will  be  made  to  organize  ecclesiastical  duplicates  of  fraternal 
insurance  societies,  cooperative  undertakings,  labor  bureaus, 


348  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

etc.  There  will  be  Christian  socialist  parties  in  politics. 
The  Church  will  claim  to  be  the  only  agency  through  which 
social  salvation  can  come.  It  will  seek  to  keep  the  social 
movement  under  clerical  control.  This  effort  will  be  prompted 
partly  by  the  desire  to  put  its  organized  power  at  the  service 
of  the  poor;  partly  by  the  fear  of  non-Christian  or  anti- 
Christian  influences  which  may  dominate  social  radicalism; 
and  partly  by  the  instinct  of  self-assertion,  self -protection,  and 
self-aggrandizement  which  resides  in  every  social  organiza- 
tion. Just  as  the  desire  to  save  individuals  is  now  frequently 
vitiated  by  the  anxiety  to  increase  church  membership,  so 
the  desire  to  save  social  life  may  be  vitiated  by  the  anxiety 
to  keep  the  Church  to  the  front.  Those  ecclesiastical  bodies 
which  have  the  strongest  church-consciousness  are  most  likely 
to  insist  that  this  work  shall  be  done  through  them  or  not 
at  all.  The  history  of  the  social  movement  in  Europe  has 
furnished  most  interesting  and  significant  demonstrations  of 
this  tendency.  But  it  is  full  of  peril  not  only  to  the  Church, 
but  to  the  social  movement  itself.  It  beclouds  the  social 
issues  by  ecclesiastical  interests  and  jealousies.  It  subtly 
and  unconsciously  changes  the  aim  from  the  salvation  of 
the  people  to  the  salvation  of  the  Church.  The  social  move- 
ment could  have  no  more  powerful  ally  than  religious  enthu- 
siasm; it  could  have  no  more  dangerous  ally  than  ecclesi- 
asticism.  If  the  Church  truly  desires  to  save  the  social  life 
of  the  people,  it  must  be  content  with  inspiring  the  social 
movement  with  religious  faith  and  daring,  and  it  must  not 
attempt  to  control  and  monopolize  it  for  its  own  organiza- 
tion. If  a  man  wants  to  give  honest  help,  he  must  fill  him- 
self with  the  spirit  of  Jesus  and  divest  himself  of  the  ecclesi- 
y/     astical  point  of  view. 


WHAT   TO    DO  349 

In  personal  religion  the  first  requirement  is  to  repent  and  Social  re- 
believe  in  the  gospel.     As  long  as  a  man  is  self-righteous  ^dfahh. 
and  complacently  satisfied  with  his  moral  attainments,  there 
is  no  hope  that  he  will  enter  into  the  higher  development, 
and  unless  he  has  faith  that  a  higher  level  of  spiritual  life  is 
attainable,  he  will  be  lethargic  and  stationary. 

Social  religion,  too,  demands  repentance  and  faith :  repent- 
ance for  our  social  sins ;  faith  in  the  possibility  of  a  new  social 
order.  As  long  as  a  man  sees  in  our  present  society  only  a 
few  inevitable  abuses  and  recognizes  no  sin  and  evil  deep- 
seated  in  the  very  constitution  of  the  present  order,  he  is  still 
in  a  state  of  moral  blindness  and  without  conviction  of  sin. 
Those  who  believe  in  a  better  social  order  are  often  told  that 
they  do  not  know  the  sinfulness  of  the  human  heart.  They 
could  justly  retort  the  charge  on  the  men  of  the  evangelical 
school.  When  the  latter  deal  with  public  wrongs,  they  often 
exhibit  a  curious  unfamiliarity  with  the  forms  which  sin 
assumes  there,  and  sometimes  reverently  bow  before  one  of 
the  devil's  spider-webs,  praising  it  as  one  of  the  mighty  works 
of  God.  Regeneration  includes  that  a  man  must  pass  under 
the  domination  of  the  spirit  of  Christ,  so  that  he  will  judge 
of  life  as  Christ  would  judge  of  it.  That  means  a  revaluation  v/  ir 
of  social  values.  Things  that  are  now  "exalted  among  men" 
must  become  "an  abomination"  to  him  because  they  are 
built  on  wrong  and  misery.  Unless  a  man  finds  his  judg- 
ment at  least  on  some  fundamental  questions  in  opposition 
to  the  current  ideas  of  the  age,  he  is  still  a  child  of  this  world 
and  has  not  "tasted  the  powers  of  the  coming  age."  He 
will  have  to  repent  and  believe  if  he  wants  to  be  a  Christian 
in  the  full  sense  of  the  world. 

No  man  can  help  the  people  until  he  is  himself  free  from 


350  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  spell  which  the  present  order  has  cast  over  our  moral 
judgment.  We  have  repeatedly  pointed  out  that  every  social 
institution  weaves  a  protecting  integument  of  glossy  idealiza- 
tion about  itself  like  a  colony  of  tent-caterpillars  in  an  apple 
tree.  For  instance,  wherever  militarism  rules,  war  is  idealized 
by  monuments  and  paintings,  poetry  and  song.  The  stench 
of  the  hospitals  and  the  maggots  of  the  battle-field  are  passed 
in  silence,  and  the  imagination  of  the  people  is  filled  with 
waving  plumes  and  the  shout  of  charging  columns.  A 
Russian  general  thought  Verestchagin's  pictures  ought  to  be 
destroyed  because  they  disenchanted  the  people.  If  war  is 
ever  to  be  relegated  to  the  limbo  of  outgrown  barbarism,  we 
must  shake  off  its  magic.  When  we  comprehend  how  few 
wars  have  ever  been  fought  for  the  sake  of  justice  or  the 
people;  how  personal  spite,  the  ambition  of  military  pro- 
fessionals, and  the  protection  of  capitalistic  ventures  are  the 
real  moving  powers ;  how  the  governing  classes  pour  out  the 
blood  and  wealth  of  nations  for  private  ends  and  exude 
patriotic  enthusiasm  like  a  squid  secreting  ink  to  hide  its 
retreat  —  then  the  mythology  of  war  will  no  longer  bring  us 
to  our  knees,  and  we  shall  fail  to  get  drunk  with  the  rest 
when  martial  intoxication  sweeps  the  people  off  their  feet. 

In  the  same  way  we  shall  have  to  see  through  the  fictions 
of  capitalism.  We  are  assured  that  the  poor  are  poor 
through  their  own  fault;  that  rent  and  profits  are  the  just 
dues  of  foresight  and  ability;  that  the  immigrants  are  the 
cause  of  corruption  in  our  city  politics;  that  we  cannot 
compete  with  foreign  countries  unless  our  working  class  will 
descend  to  the  wages  paid  abroad.  These  are  all  very 
plausible  assertions,  but  they  are  lies  dressed  up  in  truth. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  conscious  lying.     Industrialism  as  a 


WHAT   TO    DO  351 

whole  sends  out  deceptive  prospectuses  just  like  single  cor- 
porations within  it.  But  in  the  main  these  misleading  theo- 
ries are  the  complacent  self-deception  of  those  who  profit  by 
present  conditions  and  are  loath  to  believe  that  their  life  is 
working  harm.  It  is  very  rare  for  a  man  to  condemn  the 
means  by  which  he  makes  a  living,  and  we  must  simply  make 
allowance  for  the  warping  influence  of  self-interest  when  he 
justifies  himself  and  not  believe  him  entirely.^  In  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  tiny  children  in  Eng- 
land were  driven  to  the  looms  with  whips,  and  women  lost 
even  the  physical  appearance  of  womanhood  in  the  coal 
mines,  the  owners  insisted  that  English  industry  would  be 
ruined  by  the  proposed  reform  laws,  and  doubtless  they 
thought  so.  If  men  holding  stock  in  traction  companies 
assert  that  municipal  ownership  is  un-American;  if  the  ex- 
press companies  say  that  parcels  cannot  be  carried  below 
their  own  amazing  rates;  if  Mr.  Baer  in  the  midst  of  the 
coal  strike  assured  a  minister  that  "God  in  his  infinite  wis- 
dom had  given  control  of  the  property  interests  of  the  coun- 
try" to  him  and  his  associates  and  they  would  do  all  things 
well  —  we  must  simply  allow  for  the  warping  effect  of  self- 
interest  and  pass  on  to  the  order  of  the  day.  Macaulay  said 
that  the  doctrine  of  gravitation  would  not  yet  be  accepted  if 
it  had  interfered  with  vested  interests. 

The  greatest  contribution  which  any  man  can  make  to  the 
social  movement  is  the  contribution  of  a  regenerated  per- 
sonality, of  a  will  which  sets  justice  above  policy  and  profit, 
and  of  an  intellect  emancipated  from  falsehood.  Such  a  man 
will  in  some  measure  incarnate  the  principles  of  a  higher 

*  John  Graham  Brooks,  in  the  introductory  chapter  to  "The  Social 
Unrest,"  gives  very  interesting  testimony  to  this  fact. 


352  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

social  order  in  his  attitude  to  all  questions  and  in  all  his  rela- 
tions to  men,  and  will  be  a  well-spring  of  regenerating  in- 
fluences. If  he  speaks,  his  judgment  will  be  a  corrective 
force.  If  he  listens,  he  will  encourage  the  truth-teller  and 
discourage  the  pedler  of  adulterated  facts  and  maxims.  If 
others  lose  heart,  he  will  stay  them  with  his  inspired  patience. 
If  any  new  principle  is  to  gain  power  in  human  history,  it 
must  take  shape  and  life  in  individuals  who  have  faith  in  it. 
The  men  of  faith  are  the  living  spirits,  the  channels  by  which 
new  truth  and  power  from  God  enter  humanity.  To  repent 
of  our  collective  social  sins,  to  have  faith  in  the  possibility 
and  reality  of  a  divine  life  in  humanity,  to  submit  the  will  to 
the  purposes  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  to  permit  the  divine 
inspiration  to  emancipate  and  clarify  the  moral  insight  — 
this  is  the  most  intimate  duty  of  the  religious  man  who  would 
help  to  build  the  coming  Messianic  era  of  mankind. 

Social  The  men  who  have  worked  out  the  new  social  Christianity 

tk«f^^  ^^'  ^  "Cvi&xx  own  thinking  and  living  constitute  a  new  type  of 
'  Christian.  At  a  religious  convention  it  is  easy  to  single  out 
the  speakers  who  have  had  a  vision  of  the  social  redemption 
of  humanity.  No  matter  what  subject  they  handle,  they 
handle  it  with  a  different  grasp.  Their  horizon  is  wider; 
their  sympathy  more  catholic ;  their  faith  more  daring.  It  is 
significant  that  they  predominate  when  speakers  are  selected 
for  important  occasions.  The  men  of  natural  ability  and 
idealism  are  most  receptive  to  the  prophetic  ideas  now  dawn- 
ing, and  in  turn  these  ideas  enlarge  and  lift  the  mind  that 
harbors  them,  so  that  even  those  who  do  not  think  that  way 
pay  the  tribute  of  attention  when  they  speak. 
But  that  type  propagates  itself.     Mankind  is  so  closely 


WHAT   TO   DO  353 

bound  together  that  no  man  lives  to  himself,  and  no  man  is 
saved  to  himself  alone.  The  new  salvation  is  contagious. 
Those  who  have  wrought  out  a  faith  that  embraces  the  salva- 
tion of  all  human  relations,  make  it  easier  for  others  to  reach 
the  same  unification  of  all  relations  in  the  great  aim  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  There  will  be  a  social .  evangelization, 
consciously  and  unconsciously.  The  believers  will  win  other 
believers. 

The  young  men  will  respond,  and  there  is  no  telling  to 
what  a  young  man  will  rise  if  the  divine  aim  and  impulse  are 
in  him.  "L'homme,  I'homme  lui-meme  est  une  quantite 
indeterminable."  *  Such  young  minds  are  "the  hidden  germs 
of  fresh  humanities,  the  hidden  founts  of  gathering  river- 
jBoods."  After  twenty  or  thirty  years  the  young  men  who 
now  embrace  the  new  social  faith  will  be  in  the  controlling 
positions  in  society  and  will  carry  into  practice  some  fractional 
part  of  the  ideals  of  their  youth.  Few  may  preserve  them 
uncontaminated  to  the  end ;  they  will  compromise ;  they  may 
surrender ;  but  they  can  never  be  quite  the  same  again.  The 
men  and  women  of  Brook  Farm  did  not  all  remain  faithful 
to  their  early  idealism,  but  they  have  left  their  impress  on  the 
country  for  good.  The  revolutionists  of  1848  did  not  all  re- 
main revolutionists,  but  it  is  strange  to  see  how  many  of  the 
poets  and  statesmen  and  educators  who  had  something  of 
the  divine  afflatus  in  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
had  nourished  the  revolutionary  enthusiasm  in  their  hearts 
in  the  earlier  half  of  the  century.^    A  surprising  number  of 

•  Galiani,  quoted  by  Nathusius,  "Die  Mitarbeit  der  Kirche  an  der  Losung 
der  sozialen  Frage,"  p.  68. 

*  For  instance,  in  Germany  the  poets  Uhland,  Freiligrath,  and  Kinkel;  the 
philosophers  Feuerbach  and  Ruge;  the  scientist  Virchow;  the  musician 
Wagner. 

"J    2k 


354  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  men  who  are  foremost  in  the  present  struggle  in  our  own 
country  to  reconquer  for  the  people  some  of  the  political 
powers  and  economic  privileges  bartered  away  by  a  former 
generation,  have  been  under  the  influence  of  the  movement 
led  by  Henry  George  and  of  the  diluted  socialism  following 
that. 

It  has  always  been  recognized  that  the  creation  of  regen- 
erate personalities,  pledged  to  righteousness,  is  one  of  the 
most  important  services  which  the  Church  can  render  to 
social  progress.  But  regeneration  merely  creates  the  will  to 
do  the  right ;  it  does  not  define  for  a  man  what  is  right.  That 
is  defined  for  him  in  the  main  by  the  religious  community 
whose  ideas  he  accepts.  If  his  church  community  demands 
total  abstinence  from  liquor,  he  will  consider  that  as  part  of 
the  Christian  life;  if  it  sanctions  slavery  or  polygamy,  he 
will  consider  them  good.  While  the  Church  was  swayed  by 
ascetic  ideas,  the  dedication  of  the  will  to  God  meant  sur- 
render to  the  monastic  life.  In  the  past  the  Church  has 
largely  connected  the  idea  of  religious  duty  with  the  service 
of  the  Church.  It  has  made  itself  the  summum  bonum,  the 
embodiment  of  all  religious  aims.  To  that  extent  it  has 
monopolized  for  itself  the  power  of  devotion  begotten  in 
regenerated  hearts  and  has  not  directed  that  incalculable 
force  toward  social  and  political  affairs.  Now  that  the  idea 
of  social  salvation  is  taking  hold  of  us,  the  realm  of  duty 
spread  before  a  mind  dedicating  itself  to  God's  service 
is  becoming  more  inclusive.  The  social  work  of  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Y.  W.  C.  A.,  of  the  Salvation  Army  and  the 
Volunteers  of  America,  of  the  social  settlements  and  institu- 
tional churches,  show  what  is  coming.  It  is  significant  that 
several  new  religious  sects  have  embodied  the  social  ideal  in 


WHAT   TO   DO  355 

their  religious  aims.  If  the  Church  in  any  measure  will  lay 
consecrating  hands  on  those  who  undertake  social  redemp- 
tion, it  will  hallow  their  work  and  give  it  religious  dignity 
and  joy.  And  when  politicians  and  social  exploiters  have  to 
deal  with  the  stubborn  courage  of  men  who  pray  about  their 
politics,  they  will  have  a  new  factor  to  reckon  with. 

The  older  conception  of  religion  viewed  as  religious  only 
what  ministered  to  the  souls  of  men  or  what  served  the 
Church.  When  a  man  attended  the  services  of  the  Church, 
contributed  money  to  its  work,  taught  in  Sunday-school, 
spoke  to  the  unconverted,  or  visited  the  sick,  he  was  doing 
religious  work.  The  conscientiousness  with  which  he  did 
his  daily  work  also  had  a  religious  quality.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  daily  work  itself,  the  ploughing,  buildmg,  cobbling, 
or  selling  were  secular,  and  the  main  output  of  his  life  was 
not  directly  a  contribution  to  he  kingdom  of  God,  but  merely 
the  necessary  method  of  getting  a  living  for  himself  and  his 
family.  The  ministry  alone  and  a  few  allied  callings  had  the 
uplifting  consciousness  of  serving  God  in  the  total  of  daily 
work.  A  few  professions  were  marked  oflF  as  holy,  just  as 
in  past  stages  of  religion  certain  groves  and  temples  were 
marked  out  as  holy  ground  where  God  could  be  sought  and 
served. 

If  now  we  could  have  faith  enough  to  believe  that  all 
human  life  can  be  filled  with  divine  purpose ;  that  God  saves 
not  only  the  soul,  but  the  whole  of  human  life ;  that  anything 
which  serves  to  make  men  healthy,  intelligent,  happy,  and 
good  is  a  service  to  the  Father  of  men;  that  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  not  bounded  by  the  Church,  but  includes  all  hu- 
man relations  —  then  all  professions  would  be  hallowed  and 
receive  religious  dignity.     A  man  making  a  shoe  or  arguing 


356  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

a  law  case  or  planting  potatoes  or  teaching  school,  could  feel 
that  this  was  itself  a  contribution  to  the  welfare  of  mankind, 
and  indeed  his  main  contribution  to  it. 

But  such  a  view  of  our  professional  life  would  bring  it 
imder  religious  scrutiny.  If  a  man's  calling  consistedjn 
nianufacturing  or  selling  useless"  oT^arniful  stuChe  would 
find  himself  unable  to  connect  it  with  his  religion.  In  so  far 
as  the  energy  of  business  life  is  expended  Incrowding  out 
competitors,  it  would  also  be  out  ide  of  the  sanction  of 
religion,  and  religious  men  would  be  compelled  to  consider 
how  industry  and  commerce  could  be  reorganized  so  that 
there  would  be  a  maximum  of  service  to  humanity  and  a 
minimum  of  antagonism  between  those  who  desire  to  serve  it. 
As  soon  as  religion  will  set  the  kingdom  of  God  before  it  as 
the  all-inclusive  aim,  and  will  define  it  so  as  to  include  all 
rightful  relations  among  men,  the  awakened  conscience  will 
begin  to  turn  its  searchlight  on  the  industrial  and  commercial 
life  in  detail,  and  will  insist  on  eliminating  all  professions 
which  harm  instead  of  helping,  and  on  coordinating  all  pro- 
ductive activities  to  secure  a  maximum  of  service.  That  in 
itself  would  produce  a  quiet  industrial  revolution. 

Scatter  through  all  classes  and  professions  a  large  number 
of  men  and  women  whose  eyes  have  had  a  vision  of  a  true 
human  society  and  who  have  faith  in  it  and  courage  to  stand 
against  anything  that  contradicts  it,  and  public  opinion  will 
have  a  new  swiftness  and  tenacity  in  judging  on  right  and 
>i  wrong.  The  murder  of  the  Armenians,  the  horrors  of  the 
■(  Congo  Free  State,  the  ravages  of  the  liquor  traffic  in  Africa, 
the  peace  movement,  the  protest  against  child  labor  in 
America,  the  movement  for  early  closing  of  retail  stores  — 
all  these  things  arouse  only  a  limited  number  of  persons  to 


WHAT  TO   DO  357 

active  sympathy;  the  rest  are  lethargic.  It  takes  so  long  to 
"work  up  public  sentiment,"  and  even  then  it  stops  boiling 
as  fast  as  a  kettle  of  water  taken  off  the  fire.  There  are  so 
many  Christian  people  and  such  feeble  sentiment  on  public 
wrongs.  It  is  not  because  people  are  not  good  enough,  but 
because  their  goodness  has  not  been  directed  and  educated 
in  this  direction.  The  multiplication  of  socially  enlightened 
Christians  will  serve  the  body  of  society  much  as  a  physical 
organism  would  be  served  if  a  complete  and  effective  system 
of  ganglia  should  be  distributed  where  few  of  them  existed.  ^ 
The  social  body  needs  moral  innervation ;  and  the  spread  of  \/ 
men  who  combine  religious  faith,  moral  enthusiasm,  and 
economic  information,  and  apply  the  combined  result  to 
public  morality,  promises  to  create  a  moral  sensitiveness 
never  yet  known. 

The  new  evangel  of  the  kingdom  of  God  will  have  to  be  The  pulpit 
carried  into  the  common  consciousness  of  Christendom  by  social 
the  personal  faith  and  testimony  of  the  ordinary  Christian  question, 
man.     It  is  less  connected  with  the  ministrations  of  the 
Church  and  therefore  will  be  less  the  business  of  the  pro- 
fessional ministry  than  the  old  evangel  of  the  saved  soul.     It 
is  a  call  to  Christianize  the  everyday  life,  and  the  everyday 
man  will  have  to  pass  on  the  call  and  make  plain  its  mean- 
ing.    But  if  the  pulpit  is  willing  to  lend  its  immense  power 
of  proclamation  and  teaching,  it  will  immeasurably  speed  the 
spread  of  the  new  conceptions.     "With  the  assistance  of  the 
clergy  everything^  in  matters  of  social  reforms  is  easy ;  with- 
out such  help,  or  in  spite  of  it,  all  is  difficult  and  at  times 
impossible."  ^ 

*  Emile  de  Laveleye,  "Protestantism  and  Catholicism  in  their  Bearing 
upon  the  Liberty  and  Prosperity  of  Nations,"  p.  56. 


358  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

None  can  deny  that  tljie  pulpit  has  the  teaching  function, 
and  that  its  obligation  runs  wherever  a  moral  question  can  be 
raised.  Those  who  think  the  institutional  Church  a  depar- 
ture from  the  spiritual  mission  of  the  Church,  must  concede  all 
the  more  that  the  Church  should  teach  plainly  on  the  moral 
causes  and  remedies  of  social  misery.  If  the  Church  is  not 
to  deal  with  mass  poverty  by  its  organized  work,  its  obliga- 
tion is  all  the  greater  to  deal  with  it  by  the  sword  of  the  word. 
Preaching  on  social  questions  is  not  an  innovation  in  the 
history  of  the  pulpit.  The  Church  Fathers,  the  great  medi- 
aeval preachers,  the  leaders  of  the  Reformation  —  all  dealt 
more  boldly  with  public  questions  than  the  classical  sermon- 
izers  of  the  generations  just  preceding  ours.^  In  all  the 
history  of  preaching  the  pulpit  has  perhaps  never  been  so 
silent  in  this  direction  as  in  the  nineteenth  century  before 
the  social  movement  began  to  affect  Christian  thought. 

Of  all  moral  questions  none  are  so  pressing  to-day  as 
the  questions  of  public  morality.  On  none  is  there 
greater  confusion  of  thought,  less  fixity  of  conviction,  and 
greater  need  of  clear  thought  and  wise  teaching.  What  right 
have  Christian  ministers  to  back  away  from  these  questions 
and  refuse  to  contribute  whatever  moral  discernment  God  has 
given  them  ? 

It  is  true  enough  that  social  preaching  has  often  been  badly 
done.  It  has  often  been  ignorant,  bitter,  partisan,  and  non- 
religious.  But  if  it  has  been  done  badly  by  the  few  who 
stood  alone  in  attempting  it,  that  is  all  the  more  reason  why 
all  should  develop  greater  wisdom  by  common  experience. 

There  are  preachers  who  undertake  to  discuss  the  largest 
social  questions  with  the  air  of  a  specialist  and  the  knowledge 

^  Nathiisius,  "Mitarbeit  der  Kirche,"  p.  487. 


WHAT   TO   DO  359 

of  a  tyro.  I  knew  a  man  who  preached  a  course  of  sermons 
on  social  questions  after  reading  his  first  book  on  the  subject. 
He  may  have  been  equally  rash  in  discussing  the  ways  of  the 
Almighty,  but  God  is  patient  and  does  not  talk  back.  Men 
are  more  sensitive  when  they  hear  a  half -true  dissection  of  the* 
methods  by  which  they  get  their  living.  If  a  lawyer  mis- 
states the  facts  in  court,  the  attorney  for  the  other  side  will  be 
eager  to  point  out  his  error.  If  a  minister  talks  foolishness  in 
the  pulpit,  his  hearers  have  to  suffer  in  silence  without  the 
satisfaction  of  setting  him  right.  He  has  a  perilous  im- 
munity from  contradiction  and  for  that  very  reason  is  in 
honor  bound  to  be  careful.  In  general,  it  is  safe  to  advise  a 
man  who  feels  "the  burden  of  the  Lord"  on  social  wrongs  to 
go  slowly  and  get  adequate  information,  especially  in  political 
economy  and  the  history  of  social  institutions.  It  is  more 
sensible  in  every  sermon  to  show  the  larger  application  of  the 
truth  to  social  morality  than  to  spill  out  the  entire  tub  of  his 
mind  in  a  course  of  sermons  on  social  subjects.  The  former 
is  also  a  severer  test  of  his  comprehension  of  the  subject.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  should  not  let  the  fire  of  the  Lord  cool 
down.  If  he  delays  utterance,  it  should  be  to  speak  the  more 
forcibly  and  wisely  when  he  does  speak.  He  should  not  take 
counsel  of  his  timidity  nor  wait  till  he  is  infallible.  Those 
who  hold  a  brief  for  vested  wrongs  are  not  overconscientious. 
Men  who  first  begin  to  discuss  social  wrongs  are  likely  to 
launch  into  personal  invective  against  prominent  individuals. 
This  tendency  is  in  part  a  product  of  our  religious  individual- 
ism. We  have  always  been  told  that  if  only  all  individuals 
were  regenerated  and  lived  right,  all  social  questions  would  be 
solved.  Consequently  when  we  see  wrong  done,  we  feel  that 
it  must  be  due  to  the  personal  wickedness  of  individuals. 


360  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

But  the  farther  a  man  goes  in  his  comprehension  of  the 
questions  before  us,  the  more  will  he  realize  that  the  great 
leaders  of  industry  are  not  committing  mischief  for  the  fun  of 
J  it,  but  that  they  are  themselves  the  victims  of  social  forces. 
They  are  free  only  within  very  contracted  limits.  In  under- 
paying and  overworking  his  men,  or  in  employing  women 
and  children,  the  man  with  kind  intentions  is  pushed  by  the 
entire  group  to  which  he  belongs.  In  competition  the  most 
ruthless  man  sets  the  pace.  Corporate  management  elimi- 
nates personal  sympathy  and  the  individual  sense  of  honor  to 
a  degree  which  many  of  us  hardly  understand.  The  moral 
code  of  the  business  man  is  largely  shaped  for  him  by  the 
moral  code  of  his  class.  If  he  bribes  public  officials,  it  is 
often  hard  to  say  if  he  is  a  corrupter  of  innocence  or  the 
victim  of  blackmail.  If  he  breaks  the  law,  it  may  be  because 
the  law  is  a  formulation  of  outgrown  conditions  which  has  to 
be  broken  if  commercial  development  is  to  make  headway. 

A  business  man  may  be  the  victim  of  evil  hitherto  done  by 
all,  or  the  cause  of  evil  henceforth  done  by  all.  He  may  yield 
to  the  pressure  of  evil  with  alacrity  because  it  offers  him  profit, 
or  he  may  yield  with  a  heavy  heart  because  it  seems  the  les- 
ser evil  of  two  between  which  he  must  choose.  By  these  ques- 
tions God  will  judge  him.  But  if  man  undertakes  to  judge 
him,  he  must  do  it  in  love  and  mercy  and  with  self-accu- 
sation, because  we  have  all  jointly  spun  the  fatal  web  of  temp- 
tation in  which  the  sinner  is  entangled.  The  community  is 
particeps  criminis  with  the  individual  in  almost  every  sin  that 
is  committed.  The  girl  who  drifts  into  shame  because  no 
happy  marriage  is  open  to  her ;  the  boy  who  runs  into  youth- 
ful criminality  because  he  has  no  outlet  for  his  energies  except 
the  street ;  the  great  financial  operator  who  organizes  decep- 


WHAT   TO   DO  361 

tive  moments  in  the  stock  market  and  fleeces  the  mass  who  are 
crazy  for  unearned  gain — they  can  justly  turn  against  us  all 
and  say,  —  *'You  have  led  us  into  temptation." 

It  is  not  only  unjust  but  unwise  to  make  a  prominent  in- 
dividual the  scapegoat  for  the  sin  of  all.  If  people  are  led  to 
think  that  an  evil  is  the  personal  product  of  one  man  or  a 
small  group  of  men  their  attention  will  be  diverted  from  the 
deeper  causes  which  produced  these  men  and  would  have 
produced  others  of  the  same  kind  if  these  had  never  existed. 

Any  preacher  dealing  with  social  questions  is  certain  to  be 
charged  with  partiality.  The  wider  our  social  cleavage,  the 
more  difficult  will  it  be  to  satisfy  both  sides.  Nor  is  it  his 
business  to  try  trimming  and  straddling.  He  must  seek  to 
hew  as  straight  as  the  moral  law.  Let  others  voice  special 
interests ;  the  minister  of  Jesus  Christ  must  voice  the  mind  of 
Jesus  Christ.  His  strength  will  lie  in  the  high  impartiality 
of  moral  insight  and  love  to  all. 

But  if  he  really  follows  the  mind  of  Christ,  he  will  be  likely 
to  take  the  side  of  the  poor  in  most  issues.  The  poor  are 
likely  to  be  the  wronged.  Almost  any  man  will  concede  that 
in  past  history  the  poor  have  been  oppressed,  and  that  in 
foreign  countries  they  are  now  being  oppressed.  Wherever 
the  situation  is  far  enough  away  to  allow  us  to  be  impartial, 
we  see  correctly.  But  that  constitutes  a  presumption  that 
the  same  situation  exists  in  our  own  country.  The  saying  of 
Mirabeau  is  as  true  as  any  other  historical  maxim,  "When 
the  people  have  complained,  the  people  have  always  been 
right."  The  strong  have  ample  means  of  defending  all  their 
just  interests  and  usually  enough  power  left  to  guard  their 
unjust  interests  too.  Those  who  have  been  deprived  of  in- 
telligence, education,  and  property  need  such  championship 


362  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

as  the  ministers  of  Jesus  Christ  can  give  them,  and  any  desire 
to  pardon  and  excuse  should  be  exercised  on  their  belief. 

As  things  are,  a  minister  will  have  to  make  a  conscious 
effort  if  he  is  to  be  fair  to  the  poor.  The  daily  press,  public 
opinion,  custom,  literature,  orthodox  economic  science,  and 
nearly  all  the  forces  which  shape  thought,  are  on  the  side  of 
things  as  they  are.  Unless  a  minister  consciously  puts  him- 
self into  contact  with  the  working  classes  by  attending  their 
meetings  and  reading  their  literature,  he  will  assume  that  he 
is  judging  fairly,  whereas  he  has  never  heard  more  than  one 
side.  If  he  attends  the  dinners  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
he  must  take  socialist  street  meetings  as  an  antidote.  So- 
cialism has  fully  as  much  claim  on  his  intellect  as  Robert 
Browning. 

If  a  man  follows  the  mind  of  Jesus  Christ  in  his  judgments, 
he  will  have  to  appear  partial  in  a  social  world  which  is  by  no 
means  built  on  a  line  with  the  mind  of  Christ.  It  is  a  differ- 
ent matter  entirely  for  a  minister  to  follow  the  mind  of  a 
political  party  and  make  himself  liable  to  the  charge  of 
partisanship.  It  may  happen  at  long  intervals  in  the  history 
of  a  nation  that  a  political  party  so  thoroughly  embodies  the 
righteous  instincts  of  the  nation  that  its  cause  is  almost 
identified  with  the  triumph  of  justice.  In  such  a  juncture  a 
minister  may  wisely  decide  that  he  must  throw  his  influence 
publicly  with  that  party  and  risk  a  loss  of  influence  in  other 
directions.  But  it  is  questionable  if  that  situation  has  con- 
fronted ministers  in  our  country  these  many  years.  A  man 
may  well  doubt  if  the  machinery  of  our  great  parties  has 
ground  out  social  progress  or  ground  it  up,  and  whether 
party  loyalty  has  propagated  patriotism  or  poisoned  it. 

A  minister  has  no  business  to  be  the  megaphone  of  a  politi- 


WHAT  TO   DO  363 

cal  party  and  its  catchwords.  He  should  rather  be  the  mas- 
ter of  politics  by  creating  the  issues  which  parties  will  have 
to  espouse.  Questions  are  usually  discussed  a  long  time  be- 
fore they  become  political  issues.  Old  political  parties  are 
controlled  by  conservative  forces  and  will  take  up  progressive 
measures  only  when  it  is  necessary  to  retain  their  followers 
or  outbid  another  party.  The  time  for  the  pulpit  to  do  its 
best  work  is  before  a  question  is  torn  to  tatters  on  the  plat- 
form. A  Christian  preacher  should  have  the  prophetic 
insight  which  discerns  and  champions  the  right  before  others 
see  it.  If  he  has  honestly  done  that,  he  can  afford  to  be 
silent  when  the  "practical  men"  grumblingly  enter  to  finish 
up  the  job  which  he  has  helped  to  lay  out  for  them.  Hail 
to  the  pioneers !  The  early  work  is  the  formative  work. 
Embodying  a  moral  conviction  in  law  is  the  last  stage  of  a 
moral  propaganda.  Laws  do  not  create  moral  convictions; 
they  merely  recognize  and  enforce  them. 

Moreover,  there  are  important  political  questions  which 
never  become  party  issues.  The  eradication  of  tuberculosis, 
for  instance,  is  a  public  task  for  the  next  decade.  But  the 
creation  of  public  sanitariums  for  the  infected,  and  the  en- 
forcement of  sanitary  regulations  for  the  prevention  of  the 
disease,  will  never  become  a  party  question.  Strong  pressure 
will  be  brought  to  bear  on  legislatures  and  public  ofl&cials  to 
protect  the  financial  interests  of  tenement-house  owners  who 
propagate  tuberculosis  by  their  death-traps,  but  no  party 
will  dare  openly  to  champion  their  cause.  If  the  pulpit 
creates  the  public  sentiment  which  will  insist  on  the  enact- 
ment and  enforcement  of  such  laws  and  ordinances,  it  will 
not  be  meddling  with  party  politics. 

One  of  the  most  serious  charges  that  can  be  raised  against 


364  'CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

preaching  on  social  questions  is  that  it  is  unreligious.  It  is 
the  business  of  a  preacher  to  connect  all  that  he  thinks  and 
says  with  the  mind  and  will  of  God,  to  give  the  religious  inter- 
pretation to  all  human  relations  and  questions,  and  to  infuse 
the  divine  sympathy  and  passion  into  all  moral  discussions. 
If  he  fails  in  that,  he  is  to  that  extent  not  a  minister  of  religion. 
It  is  the  highest  test  of  his  influence  if  his  pastoral  visits,  his 
chance  conversations,  and  his  pulpit  teachings  somehow  help 
men  and  women  to  take  the  high  and  divine  view  of  their  past 
and  their  future,  of  their  joys  and  their  sorrows,  of  their 
labors  and  their  pleasures.  That  test  is  justly  applied  to  his 
teachings  on  social  questions  too.  Others  can  talk  from  the 
point  of  view  of  economic  and  political  expediency ;  does  the 
minister  talk  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  eternally  true  and 
right? 

In  passing  judgment  on  a  preacher's  work  by  that  canon  we 
shall  have  to  remember,  however,  that  religion  and  public 
questions  have  so  long  been  divorced  that  it  requires  a  strong 
and  independent  religious  nature  to  carry  the  religious  spirit 
freely  into  the  discussion  of  public  questions.  If  a  man  can 
make  his  hearers  feel  that  they  are  in  the  presence  of  God  when 
he  discusses  the  condition  of  the  working  girls  or  the  drift  of 
the  city  administration,  he  gives  proof  of  unusual  qualities. 
It  was  evidence  of  religious  genius  when  Jeremiah  carried 
religion  out  of  national  life  into  the  experiences  of  the  suffering 
individual  soul.  To-day  it  is  evidence  of  spontaneous  reli- 
gious power  if  a  man  can  carry  religion  from  private  experience 
into  national  life. 

His  hearers,  too,  are  likely  to  mistake  their  own  customs 
for  the  whole  range  of  religion.  Because  they  have  not  been 
accustomed  to  hear  such  questions  discussed  in  the  pulpit, 


WHAT   TO    DO  365 

they  feel  that  the  preacher  is  dragging  in  alien  and  non- 
religious  matters.  When  the  "Evangelical  movement" 
swept  over  the  Church  of  England,  and  ministers  once  more 
preached  personal  repentance  and  conversion,  Lord  Mel- 
bourne is  said  to  have  risen  from  his  pew  and  stalked  down 
the  aisle,  angrily  exclaiming,  "Things  have  come  to  a  pretty 
pass  when  religion  is  made  to  invade  the  sphere  of  private  life." 

At  any  rate,  social  questions  cannot  be  more  non-religious 
than  many  of  the  things  about  which  ministers  have  to  talk 
in  the  pulpit.  If  it  is  religious  to  advocate  rebuilding  a 
church,  why  is  it  non-religious  to  advocate  tearing  down  and 
rebuilding  slum  districts  ?  If  it  is  religious  to  encourage  the 
church  to  recarpet  the  aisles  and  cushion  the  seats  for  the  feet 
and  backs  of  the  worshippers,  why  is  it  non-religious  to  speak 
of  playgrounds  for  young  feet  and  old-age  pensions  for  aged 
backs  ? 

Social  preaching  has  come  under  suspicion  because  experi- 
ence has  shown  that  when  a  preacher  begins  to  speak  on 
social  questions,  he  is  apt  to  veer  away  from  the  established 
course  and  fly  oflF  on  a  tangent.  The  new  ideas  take  such 
hold  on  him  that  all  other  Christian  truth  seems  stale  and 
outworn  in  comparison.  His  preaching  becomes  one-sided. 
He  twangs  on  a  harp  of  a  single  string,  and  it  becomes  a 
weariness.  If  he  encounters  coldness,  he  may  shake  the 
dust  of  the  Church  from  his  feet  in  witness  that  it  has  once 
more  cast  out  its  prophets. 

Such  cases  are  held  up  as  proof  that  social  questions  are 
forbidden  ground.  They  are  indeed  profoundly  pathetic. 
These  men  are  the  explorers  who  travel  along  the  unblazed 
trails  where  in  coming  days  the  highways  of  the  Church  will 
run,  and  explorers  are  apt  to  leave  their  graves  as  way-marks 


366  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL    CRISIS 

for  those  who  come  after.  It  is  easy  enough  to  march 
steadily  on  a  beaten  road  and  in  the  rank  and  file  of  a  regi- 
ment. If  these  social  preachers  were  not  so  alone,  they  would 
not  go  astray  as  they  do.  If  they  found  many  other  ministers 
thinking  the  same  thoughts,  they  could  exchange  and  correct 
their  ideas,  and  the  future  would  not  seem  so  dark.  Thus  the 
guilt  for  their  aberrations  rests  in  part  on  all  of  us  who  have 
shirked  our  duty  and  lagged  behind.  It  may  be  that  some 
of  these  men  are  naturally  unstable  and  self-confident.  But 
that  is  the  stuff  of  which  pioneers  are  usually  made.  Our 
Western  pioneers  were  the  venturesome  pick ;  the  solid  people 
stayed  at  home.  Abraham,  who  was  the  father  of  all  men  of 
faith,  was  also  the  father  of  pioneers,  striking  off  into  the  un- 
known at  the  call  of  an  inner  voice,  and  perhaps  some  of  his 
friends  in  Haran  hinted  that  he  was  a  rolling  stone  and  "lacked 
common  sense."  It  may  be  that  God  will  find  more  virtue 
in  the  impetuous  faults  of  these  pioneers  of  social  Christian- 
ity than  in  the  faultless  prudence  of  their  critics.  Balance 
was  hardly  the  distinguishing  quality  of  the  Old  Testament 
prophets,  and  yet  they  are  commonly  supposed  to  have  been 
good  for  something. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  interest  in  the  social  question 
is  apt  to  overshadow  the  other  aspects  of  religion.  Absorbed 
in  public  questions,  such  men  may  forget  to  appeal  to  the 
individual  soul  for  repentance  and  to  comfort  those  in  sor- 
row. That  is  a  sore  defect.  The  human  soul  with  its  guilt 
and  its  longing  for  holiness  and  deathless  life  is  a  permanent 
fact  in  religion,  and  no  social  perfection  will  quench  its  hunger 
for  the  hving  God.  There  was  no  chance  for  Christianizing 
public  life  on  the  island  where  Robinson  Crusoe  lived  alone 
with  his  parrot  and  his  cats,  but  when  Crusoe  began  to  read 


WHAT   TO   DO  367 

his  Bible  and  won  through  to  repentance  for  his  past  and  faith 
in  God,  it  was  a  triumph  of  religion. 

There  are  two  great  entities  in  human  life, —  the  human  soul 
and  the  human  race,  —  and  religion  is  to  save  both.  The  soul 
is  to  seek  righteousness  and  eternal  life;  the  race  is  to  seek 
righteousness  and  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  social  preacher 
is  apt  to  overlook  the  one.  But  the  evangelical  preacher  has 
long  overlooked  the  other.  It  is  due  to  that  protracted  neglect 
that  we  are  now  deluged  by  the  social  problem  in  its  pres- 
ent acute  form.  It  is  partly  due  to  the  same  neglect  that 
our  churches  are  overwhelmingly  feminine.  Woman  nur- 
tures the  individual  in  the  home,  and  God  has  equipped  her 
with  an  intuitive  insight  into  the  problems  of  the  individual 
life.  Man's  life  faces  the  outward  world,  and  his  instincts 
and  interests  lie  that  way.  Hence  men  crowd  where  public 
questions  get  downright  discussion.  Our  individualistic  re- 
ligion has  helped  to  feminize  our  churches.  A  very  pro- 
tracted one-sidedness  in  preaching  has  to  be  balanced  up,  and 
if  some  now  go  to  the  other  extreme,  those  who  have  created 
the  situation  hardly  have  the  right  to  cast  the  first  stone. 

It  seems  likely  that  even  after  this  present  inequality  of 
emphasis  is  balanced,  some  preachers  will  put  more  stress  on 
the  social  aspects  of  religion.  In  that  case  we  must  apply 
Paul's  large  and  tolerant  principle,  "There  are  diversities 
of  gifts,  but  the  same  Spirit."  Some  by  nature  and  training 
have  the  gift  of  dealing  with  individuals  and  the  loving  in- 
sight into  personal  needs ;  others  have  the  passionate  interest 
in  the  larger  life  and  its  laws.  The  Church  needs  evange- 
lists and  pastors,  but  it  needs  prophets  too. 

If  a  minister  uses  the  great  teaching  powers  of  the  pulpit 
sanely  and  wisely  to  open  the  minds  of  the  people  to  the 


ir 


368  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

moral  importance  of  the  social  questions,  he  may  be  of  the 
utmost  usefulness  in  the  present  crisis.  Intelligent  men  who 
live  in  the  midst  of  social  problems  do  not  yet  know  that 
there  is  a  social  problem,  just  as  one  may  pass  among  the 
noises  and  sights  of  a  city  street  without  noticing  them/  If 
the  minister  can  simply  induce  his  more  intelligent  hearers  to 
focus  what  is  in  their  very  field  of  vision,  thereafter  they  can 
not  help  seeing  it,  and  information  will  begin  to  collect  auto- 
matically in  their  minds.  The  Church  itself  has  riveted  the 
attention  of  the  people  on  other  aspects  of  life  hitherto 
and  thereby  has  diverted  their  attention  from  the  social  prob- 
lems.    It  ought  to  make  up  for  this. 

A  minister  mingling  with  both  classes  can  act  as  an  inter- 
preter to  both.  He  can  soften  the  increasing  class  hatred  of 
the  working  class.  He  can  infuse  the  spirit  of  moral  enthusi- 
asm into  the  economic  struggle  of  the  dispossessed  and  lift  it 
to  something  more  than  a  "  stomach  question."  On  the  other 
hand,  among  the  well-to-do,  he  can  strengthen  the  conscious- 
ness that  the  working  people  have  a  real  grievance  and  so 
increase  the  disposition  to  make  concessions  in  practical  cases 
and  check  the  inclination  to  resort  to  force  for  the  suppression 
of  discontent.  If  the  ministry  would  awaken  among  the 
wealthy  a  sense  of  social  compunction  and  moral  uneasiness, 
that  alone  might  save  our  nation  from  a  revolutionary  explo- 
sion. It  would  be  of  the  utmost  importance  to  us  all  if  the 
inevitable  readjustment  could  be  secured  by  a  continuous  suc- 
cession of  sensible  demands  on  the  one  side  and  willing  con- 
cessions on  the  other.     We  can  see  now  that  a  little  more 

*  John  Morley,  in  the  "Life  of  Cobden":  "Great  economic  and  social 
forces  flow  with  a  tidal  sweep  over  communities  that  are  only  half  conscious 
of  that  which  is  befalling  them." 


WHAT   TO   DO  369 

wisdom  and  justice  on  both  sides  might  have  found  a  peace- 
able solution  for  the  great  social  problem  of  slavery.  In- 
stead of  that  the  country  was  plunged  into  the  Civil  War  with 
its  fearful  cost  in  blood  and  wealth.  We  have  been  cursed  for 
a  generation  with  the  legacy  of  sectional  hatred,  and  the 
question  of  the  status  of  the  black  race  has  not  been  solved 
even  at  such  cost.  If  Pharaoh  again  hardens  his  heart,  he  ^ 
will  again  have  to  weep  for  his  first -bom  and  be  whelmed  in 
the  Red  Sea.  It  is  a  question  if  we  can  rally  enough  moral 
insight  and  good-will  to  create  a  peaceable  solution,  or  if  the 
Bourbon  spirit  is  to  plunge  our  nation  into  a  long- continued 
state  of  dissolution  and  anarchy  which  the  mind  shrinks  from 
contemplating.  The  influence  of  the  Christian  ministry,  if 
exercised  in  the  spirit  of  Christian  democracy,  might  be  one 
of  the  most  powerful  solvents  and  the  decisive  influence  for 
peace. 

The  spiritual  force  ol  Christianity  should  be  turned  against  The  Chris- 
the  matenalisrn^^ndjnarQmonism  of  our  industrial  and  social  cqption^of 
order.  ^^^  and 

property. 


If  a  man  sacrifices  his  human  dignity  and  seK-respect  to 
increase  his  income,  or  stunts  his  intellectual  growth  and  his 
human  affections  to  sweU  his  bank  account,  he  is  to  that  ex- 
tentjeiying^najnmon^^  God.     Likewise  if  he  uses 

up  and  injures  the  life  of  his  fellow-men  to  make  money 
for  himself,  he  serves  mammon  and  denies  God.  But  our 
industrial  order  does  both.  It  makes  property  the  end,  and 
man  the  means  to  produce  it. 

Man  is  treated  as  a  thing  to  produce  more  things.  Men 
are  hired  as  hands  and  not  as  men.  They  are  paid  only 
enough  to  maintain  their  working  capacity  and  not  enough 

3B 


370  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

to  develop  their  manhood.  When  their  working  force  is 
exhausted,  they  are  flung  aside  without  consideration  of  their 
human  needs.  Jesus  asked,  "Is  not  a  man  more  than  a 
sheep?"  Our  industry  says  "No."  It  is  careful  of  its 
live  stock  and  machinery,  and  careless  of  its  human  working 
force.  It  keeps  its  electrical  engines  immaculate  in  burnished 
cleanliness  and  lets  its  human  dynamos  sicken  in  dirt.  In 
the  15th  Assembly  District  in  New  York  City,  between  loth 
and  nth  avenues,  1321  families  in  1896  had  three  bath- 
tubs between  them.  Our  industrial  establishments  are  in- 
stitutions for  the  creation  of  dividends,  and  not  for  the  foster- 
ing of  human  life.  In  all  our  public  life  the  question  of  profit 
is  put  first.  Pastor  Stocker,  in  a  speech  on  child  and  female 
labor  in  the  German  Reichstag,  said:  "We  have  put  the 
question  the  wrong  way.  We  have  asked :  How  much  child 
and  female  labor  does  industry  need  in  order  to  flourish, 
to  pay  dividends,  and  to  sell  goods  abroad?  Whereas  we 
ought  to  have  asked :  How  ought  industry  to  be  organized  in 
order  to  protect  and  foster  the  family,  the  human  individual, 
and  the  Christian  life  ?  "  That  simple  reversal  of  the  question 
marks  the  difference  between  the  Christian  conception  of  life 
and  property  and  the  mammonistic. 

"  Life  is  more  than  food  and  raiment."  More,  too,  than  the 
apparatus  which  makes  food  and  raiment.  What  is  all  the 
machinery  of  our  industrial  organization  worth  if  it  does  not 
make  human  life  healthful  and  happy  ?  But  is  it  doing  that  ? 
Men  are  first  of  all  men,  folks,  members  of  our  human  family. 
To  view  them  first  of  all  as  labor  force  is  civilized  barbarism. 
It  is  the  attitude  of  the  exploiter.  Yet  unconsciously  we  have 
all  been  taught  to  take  that  attitude  and  talk  of  men  as  if  they 
were  horse-powers  or  volts.     Our  commercialism  has  tainted 


WHAT   TO    DO  371 

our  sense  of  fundamental  human  verities  and  values.  We 
measure  our  national  prosperity  by  pig-iron  and  steel  instead 
of  by  the  welfare  of  the  people.  In  city  affairs  the  property 
owners  have  more  influence  than  the  family  owners.  For 
instance,  the  pall  of  coal  smoke  hanging  over  our  industrial 
cities  is  injurious  to  the  eyes ;  it  predisposes  to  diseases  of  the 
respiratory  organs ;  it  depresses  the  joy  of  living ;  it  multiplies 
the  labor  of  housewives  in  cleaning  and  washing.  But  it 
continues  because  it  would  impose  expense  on  business  to  in- 
stall smoke  consumers  or  pay  skilled  stokers.  If  an  agitation 
is  begun  to  abolish  the  smoke  nuisance,  the  telling  argument 
is  not  that  it  inflicts  injury  on  the  mass  of  human  life,  but  that 
the  smoke  "hurts  business,"  and  that  it  really  "pays"  to 
consume  the  wasted  carbon.  In  political  life  one  can  con- 
stantly see  the  cause  of  human  life  pleading  long  and  vainly 
for  redress,  like  the  widow  before  the  unjust  judge.  Then 
suddenly  comes  the  bass  voice  of  Property,  and  all  men  stand 
with  hat  in  hand. 

Our  scientific  pohtical  economy  has  long  been  an  oracle  of 
the  false  god.  It  has  taught  us  to  approach  economic  ques- 
tions from  the  point  of  view  of  goods  and  not  of  man.  It  v 
tells  us  how  wealth  is  produced  and  divided  and  consumed 
by  man,  and  not  how  man's  life  and  development  can  best 
be  fostered  by  material  wealth.  It  is  significant  that  the  dis- 
cussion of  "  Consumption"  of  wealth  has  been  most  neglected 
in  political  economy;  yet  that  is  humanly  the  most  impor- 
tant of  all.  Theology  must  become  christocentric ;  politi- 
cal economy  must  become  anthropocentric.  Man  is  Chris- 
tianizedwhen  he  puts  God  before  self;  political  economy 
will  be   Christianized   when   it   puts    man    before   wealth.  \/ 

Socialistic  political  economy  does  that.    It  is  materialistic  in        / 


7 


372  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL  CRISIS 

its  theory  of  human  Hfe  and  history,  but  it  is  humane  in  its 
^  '        aims,  and  to  that  extent  is  closer  to  Christianity  than  the 
orthodox  science  has  been. 

It  is  the  function  of  rehgion  to  teach  the  individual  to  value 
his  soul  more  than  his  body,  and  his  moral  integrity  more 
than  his  income.  In  the  same_w3jLjt_is_the_f unction^ of 
religion  to  teach  society  to  value  human  life  more  than 
property,  and  to  value  property  only  in  so  far  as  it  forms  the 
material  basis  for  the  higher  development  ofhuniaJlJife. 
When  life  and  property  are  in  apparent  collision,  life  must 
take  precedence.  This  is  not  only  Christian  but  prudent. 
When  commercialism  in  its  headlong  greed  deteriorates  the 
mass  of  human  life,  it  defeats  its  own  covetousness  by  killing 
the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg.  Humanity  is  that  goose 
—  in  more  senses  than  one.  It  takes  faith  in  the  moral  law 
to  believe  that  this  penny-wise  craft  is  really  suicidal  folly, 
and  to  assert  that  wealth  which  uses  up  the  people  paves  the 
way  to  beggary.  Religious  men  have  been  cowed  by  the 
prevailing  materialism  and  arrogant  selfishness  of  our  busi- 
ness world.  They  should  have  the  courage  of  religious  faith 
and  assert  that  "man  liveth  not  by  bread  alone,"  but  by 
doing  the  will  of  God,  and  that  the  life  of  a  nation  "consisteth 
not  in  the  abundance  of  things"  which  it  produces,  but  in 
the  way  men  live  justly  with  one  another  and  humbly  with 
their  God. 

The  crea-         When  the  social  activity  of  the  Church  is  discussed,  it  is 

toms°Iiid^"    usually  assumed  that  the  churches  are  to  influence  legisla- 

institutions.    tion  and  to  watch  over  the  execution  of  the  laws.     The 

churches  are  within  their  rights  in  doing  both.     There  are 

probably  few  denominations  which  would  hesitate  a  moment 


WHAT   TO   DO  373 

to  fling  their  full  force  on  a  legislature  if  the  tenure  of  their 
property  or  the  freedom  of  their  church  administration  were 
'.hreatened.  If  it  is  right  to  lobby  in  their  own  behalf,  it 
cannot  well  be  wrong  to  lobby  on  behalf  of  the  people. 

But  we  have  an  exaggerated  idea  of  the  importance  of 
laws.  Our  legislative  bodies  are  the  greatest  law  factories 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  Our  zest  for  legislation  blinds  us 
to  the  subtle  forces  behind  and  beyond  the  law.  Those  in- 
fluences which  really  make  and  mar  human  happiness  and 
greatness  are  beyond  the  reach  of  the  law.  The  law  can 
compel  a  man  to  support  his  wife,  but  it  cannot  compel  him 
to  love  her,  and  what  are  ten  dollars  a  week  to  a  woman 
whose  love  lies  in  broken  shards  at  her  feet  ?  The  law  can 
compel  a  father  to  provide  for  his  children  and  can  interfere 
if  he  maltreats  them,  but  it  cannot  compel  him  to  give  them 
that  loving  fatherly  intercourse  which  puts  backbone  into  a 
child  forever.  The  law  can  keep  neighbors  from  trespassing, 
but  it  cannot  put  neighborly  courtesy  and  good- will  into  their 
relations.  The  State  can  establish  public  schools  and  hire 
teachers,  but  it  cannot  put  enthusiasm  and  moral  power  into 
their  work ;  yet  those  are  the  qualities  which  distinguish  the 
few  true  teachers  to  whom  we  look  back  in  after  years  as  the 
real  makers  of  our  lives.  The  highest  qualities  and  influences 
are  beyond  the  law  and  must  be  created  elsewhere. 

The  law  is  a  moral  agency,  as  effective  and  as  rough  as  a 
policeman's  club,  sweeping  in  its  operation  and  unable  to 
adjust  itself  to  individual  needs  and  the  finer  shadings  of 
moral  life.  It  furnishes  the  stiff  skeleton  of  public  morality 
which  supports  the  finer  tissues,  but  these  tissues  must  be 
deposited  by  other  forces.  The  State  is  the  outer  court  of 
the  moral  law;    within  stands  the  sanctuary  of  the  Spirit. 


374  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Religion  creates  morality,  and  morality  then  deposits  a  small 
part  of  its  contents  in  written  laws.  The  State  can  protect 
the  existing  morality  and  promote  the  coming  morality,  but 
the  vital  creative  force  of  morality  lies  deeper. 

The  law  becomes  impotent  if  it  is  not  supported  by  a 
diffused,  spontaneous  moral  impulse  in  the  community.  If 
religion  implants  love,  mutual  helpfulness,  and  respect  for  the 
life  and  rights  of  others,  there  will  be  little  left  to  do  for  the 
law  and  its  physical  force.  The  stronger  the  silent  moral 
compulsion  of  the  community,  the  less  need  for  the  physical 
compulsion  of  the  State.  If  parents  have  to  resort  to  physical 
punishment  constantly,  it  furnishes  presumptive  evidence  that 
their  training  has  been  defective  in  its  moral  factors.  If  we 
have  to  order  out  the  militia  frequently  to  quell  riots  and 
protect  property,  it  constitutes  a  charge  of  inefficiency  against 
the  religious  and  educational  institutions  of  the  community. 

Thus  it  is  clear  that  the  Church  has  a  large  field  for  social 
activity  before  touching  legislation.  It  cannot  make  laws, 
but  it  can  make  customs,  and  ^'quid  leges  sine  moribus .?"  Of 
what  avail  are  laws  without  customs?  Our  two  words, 
"morals"  and  "ethics,"  the  one  from  the  Latin  and  the  other 
from  the  Greek,  both  mean  that  which  is  customary.  There 
"'  is  a  singular  lack  of  appreciation  in  American  thought  for 
the  importance  of  custom ;  possibly  because  in  our  new  and 
plastic  life  customs  are  less  rigid  and  formative  than  any- 
where on  earth.  Yet  our  life,  too,  is  ruled  largely  by  un- 
enacted  laws.  Our  helpfulness  toward  children  and  old 
people,  our  respect  for  womanhood  and  the  consequent  un- 
paralleled freedom  of  woman's  social  intercourse,  the  com- 
parative disappearance  of  profanity  and  obscenity  from  con- 
versation —  all  this  rests  on  custom  and  not  on  law,  and 


WHAT   TO   DO  375 

these  customs  are  in  large  part  the  product  of  purified  modem 
rehgion.  The  disappearance  of  alcoholic  liquors  from  the 
homes  of  great  strata  of  our  people  is  in  most  localities  due 
to  custom  rather  than  law.  Religion  first  demanded  it,  and 
educational,  scientific,  and  economic  motives  have  since  re- 
enforced  the  custom.  Religion  first  created  the  custom  of 
Sunday  rest  and  the  law  then  protected  it.  The  weekly  rest 
day  is  a  gift  of  religion  to  the  people.  If  it  was  not  already 
so  firmly  established  in  our  life,  it  would  be  almost  impossi- 
ble to  wrest  one  full  day  from  the  whirl  of  modem  com- 
mercialism. The  law  did  not  create  Sunday  rest;  neither 
is  it  able  to  maintain  its  finer  qualities.  It  can  prohibit  work, 
but  it  cannot  prescribe  how  the  day  shall  be  spent. 

It  is  entirely  feasible  for  the  Church  to  mitigate  the  social 
hardships  of  the  working  classes  by  lending  force  to  humane 
customs.  Its  help  would  make  the  Saturday  half  holiday  in 
summer  practicable.  It  could  ease  the  strain  of  the  Christmas 
shopping  season.  It  could  secure  seats  and  rest  rooms  for 
the  girls  in  the  department  stores.  It  could  counteract  the 
tendency  of  tenement  owners  to  crowd  the  people.  It  could 
encourage  employers  in  making  a  place  for  their  aged  em- 
ployees and  discourage  the  early  exploitation  of  children.  A 
single  frank  and  prayerful  discussion  of  one  of  these  ques- 
tions in  a  social  meeting  of  the  church  or  its  societies  would 
create  more  social  morality  and  good  custom  than  many 
columns  in  the  newspapers.  Such  an  activity  would  not 
solve  the  fundamental  questions  of  capitalism,  but  it  would 
ease  the  pressure  a  little  and  would  save  the  people  from 
deterioration,  while  the  social  movement  is  moving  toward 
the  larger  solution. 

Good  customs  are  perpetually  in  danger,  and  the  Church 


376  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

can  act  as  a  conservative  influence  in  guarding  them  against 
hostile  inroads.  For  instance,  the  custom  which  barred 
alcohoUc  drinks  from  respectable  and  educated  homes  is  now 
being  undermined  by  the  influence  of  the  idle  upper  class 
which  needs  stimulants  and  copies  their  use  from  foreign 
society,  and  the  Ghurcn  should  undertake  a  new  temperance 
crusade  with  all  the  resources  of  advanced  physiological  and 
sociological  science.  The  head  of  an  important  Eastern  in- 
stitution a  few  years  ago  proposed  to  introduce  beer  in  the 
social  gatherings  of  students  in  order  to  make  them  more 
sociable.  Such  an  innovation  would  not  merely  create  the 
habit  of  moderate  drinking  in  many  young  men,  but  would 
introduce  a  foreign  custom  into  American  life.  Many  of  our 
public  dinners  are  now  wholly  free  from  the  flush  of  wine  or 
beer.  The  excellence  of  American  after-dinner  speaking,  and 
the  prevalence  of  real  humor  and  fun  at  our  public  dinners, 
are  mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  both  speaker  and  audience  are 
in  full  control  of  their  critical  faculties  and  therefore  demand 
fine  intellectual  work  and  are  in  condition  to  appreciate  it. 
The  alcoholic  paralysis  begins  with  the  brain  and  lessens  the 
capacity  for  self-scrutiny  and  self-restraint.  An  alcoholized 
audience  will  howl  at  anything  unseemly  and  be  too  dull  for 
anything  really  witty.  Even  if  the  students  of  that  institu- 
tion should  all  stop  drinking  when  they  graduated,  a  lasting 
damage  would  be  done  to  American  college  life  if  it  became 
customary  for  the  college  community  to  pass  into  partial 
narcosis  as  a  preparation  for  social  enjoyment.  Against  all 
such  corruptions  of  good  custom  the  Church  should  do 
sentinel  duty. 

Any  permanent  and  useful  advance  in  legislation  is  de- 
pendent on  the  previous  creation  of  moral  conviction  and 


WHAT   TO    DO  377 

custom.  It  is  a  commonplace  that  a  law  camiot  be  enforced 
without  the  support  of  public  opinion,  and  that  an  unenforced 
law  breaks  down  the  usefulness  of  all  related  laws  and  the 
reverence  for  law  in  general.  If  the  law  advances  faster 
than  the  average  moral  sense,  it  becomes  inoperative  and 
harmful.  The  real  advance,  therefore,  will  have  to  come 
through  those  social  forces  which  create  and  train  the  sense 
of  right.  The  religious  and  educational  forces  in  their  total- 
ity are  the  real  power  that  runs  the  cart  uphill ;  the  State  can 
merely  push  a  billet  of  wood  under  the  wheels  to  keep  it  from 
rolling  down  again.  Some  of  the  gravest  evils  of  our  day 
are  either  not  covered  by  enacted  law  or  the  law  against  them 
does  not  work.  In  such  cases  the  forces  which  create  active 
moral  conviction  are  under  accusation  for  neglect  of  duty. 
The  process  of  guarding,  creating,  or  strengthening  useful 
institutions  is  similar  to  the  process  of  creating  good  customs. 
It  is  a  function  in  which  religious  sentiment  and  the  organized 
Church  can  work  freely.  For  instance,  our  public  parks  are 
an  institution  of  the  highest  value  to  the  physical  and  moral 
life  of  the  cities.  About  fifty  years  ago  no  city  in  the  United 
States  had  purchased  an  acre  of  land  for  park  purposes. 
Mainly  through  the  influence  of  public-spirited  men,  sup-  V 
ported  by  enlightened  moral  sentiment,  parks  have  been 
created  and  are  now  not  only  increasing  their  acreage  and 
their  beauty,  but  their  usefulness.  They  are  beginning  to 
offer  sand-hills  for  the  little  children,  swimming  baths  in 
summer,  skating  in  winter,  music  on  holidays,  gymnastic 
apparatus,  and  open-air  games.  Instead  of  warning  the  peo- 
ple to  "keep  off  the  grass,"  they  are  bidding  for  the  inflow 
of  the  people.  Yet  it  is  safe  to  say  that  every  one  of  these 
advances  cost  some  struggle  and  effort,  and  at  every  such 


378  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

moment  of  struggle  a  lift  from  the  powerful  shoulders  of  the 
organized  religious  community  would  be  practically  decisive. 
The  Hague  Tribunal  is  an  institution  of  far-reaching  his- 
torical importance  which  has  grown  up  under  our  eyes.  Its 
real  origin  was  in  the  hearts  of  idealists  who  supported  their 
protest  against  war  and  armed  peace  by  scientific  reasoning. 

v-  These  ideas  found  lodgement  in  the  mind  of  Czar  Nicholas, 
and  by  the  power  of  initiative  vested  in  a  great  monarch  he 
was  able  by  a  single  manifesto  to  compel  world-wide  atten- 
tion to  the  question  and  force  a  theory  into  the  field  of  prac- 
tical politics.  But  the  suspicion  and  non-ideal  conservatism 
of  governments  is  so  great  that  they  would  have  let  the  move- 
ment die  still-bom,  if  it  had  not  awakened  the  moral  en- 
thusiasm of  the  common  people  in  those  countries  in  which 
democracy  had  trained  the  people  to  act,  and  in  which  purified 
religion  had  stored  the  strongest  ethical  dynamic.  English 
and  American  public  sentiment  were  probably  the  decisive 
factor  which  made  the  first  conference  at  the  Hague  more 
than  a  dress  parade.  The  aim  for  which  the  Conference  was 
really  called,  was  not  accomplished;  the  increase  in  arma- 
ments was  not  checked.  Instead  of  that  a  permanent  tri- 
bunal of  international  arbitration  was  created.  For  a  time 
no  use  was  made  of  it.  Many  made  mock  of  this  puny  out- 
come of  a  movement  which  had  been  mistakenly  heralded  as 
a  proposition  for  universal  peace.  Many  religious  journals 
sat  on  the  seats  of  the  scornful.  Then  another  strong  man 
with  convictions  put  his  hand  on  the  idle  machinery  and  set 
it  in  motion.  President  Roosevelt  secured  the  reference  of 
the  "Pious  Fund"  dispute  with  Mexico  and  later  the  refer- 
ence of  the  Venezuelan  disputes,  and  therewith  the  Hague 

V  Tribunal   became    an   operative  force  in  history.    Andrew 


WHAT   TO    DO  379 

Carnegie,  that  one  of  our  great  millionnaires  who  has  the 
strongest  leaven  of  democratic  ideahsm,  has  undertaken  to 
house  the  Tribunal  in  adequate  splendor.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  the  institution  will  now  perpetuate  itself  and  gradually 
enlarge  its  functions. 

Here  we  have  under  our  eye  the  various  forces  which  co- 
operate to  advance  humanity;  the  dissemination  of  ideas  by 
ideahstic  thinkers,  the  action  of  individuals  strong  by  heredi- 
tary position,  personal  character  or  wealth,  and  the  support 
of  enlightened  public  opinion.  History  will  do  the  rest.  It 
will  be  immeasurably  easier  to  assign  additional  powers  to 
the  Tribunal  than  to  create  it  in  the  first  place.  These 
forces  triumphed  over  the  sullen  reluctance  and  cynical  doubt 
of  some  governments  and  the  amused  ridicule  of  many 
"practical  men."  Many  religious  people  looked  askance, 
because  peace  on  earth  can  be  estabhshed  only  by  the  coming 
of  Christ.  Others  hailed  it  with  a  shout  of  triumph  as  an- 
other step  in  the  coming  of  Christ.  The  future  will  prob- 
ably look  back  to  it  as  the  faint  beginning  of  a  new  era  in 
international  relations  and  will  marvel  that  any  doubted  the 
clear  call  of  Christ  at  such  a  turning-point. 

"  In  the  years,  that  have  been  I  have  bound  man  closer  to  man 

And  closer  woman  to  woman ; 

And  the  stranger  hath  seen  in  a  stranger  his  brother  at  last 

And  a  sister  in  eyes  that  were  strange. 

In  the  years  that  shall  be  I  will  bind  me  nation  to  nation 

And  shore  unto  shore,"  saith  our  God. 

"  Lo  !   I  am  the  burster  of  bonds  and  the  breaker  of  barriers, 

I  am  he  that  shall  free,"  saith  the  Lord. 

"  For  the  lingering  battle,  the  contest  of  ages  is  ending, 

And  victory  foUoweth  me."  ^ 

^  Stephen  Philips. 


380  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

Such  a  cooperation  of  the  rehgious  and  political  forces  of 
the  community  furnishes  the  positive  solution  of  the  problem 
of  Church  and  State.  Historical  experience  has  compelled 
us  to  separate  Church  and  State  because  each  can  accomplish 
its  special  task  best  without  the  interference  of  the  other. 
But  they  are  not  unrelated.  Our  life  is  not  a  mechanical 
duality,  built  in  two  air-tight  compartments.  Church  and 
State  both  minister  to  something  greater  and  larger  than 
either,  and  they  find  their  true  relation  in  this  unity  of  aim 
and  service.  When  the  State  supports  morality  by  legal  con- 
straint, it  cooperates  with  the  voluntary  moral  power  of  the 
Church ;  but  if  it  should  seek  to  control  the  organization  and 
influence  of  the  Church  by  appointing  its  officers  or  inter- 
fering with  its  teaching,  it  would  tamper  with  the  seedplot 
of  moral  progress.  When  the  Church  implants  religious  im- 
pulses toward  righteousness  and  trains  the  moral  convictions 
of  the  people,  it  cooperates  with  the  State  by  creating  the 
most  delicate  and  valuable  elements  of  social  welfare  and 
progress;  but  if  it  should  enter  into  politics  to  get  funds 
from  the  public  treasury  or  police  support  for  its  doctrine 
and  ritual,  it  would  inject  a  divisive  and  corrosive  force  into 
political  life.  The  machinery  of  Church  and  State  must  be 
kept  separate,  but  the  output  of  each  must  mingle  with  the 
other  to  make  social  life  increasingly  wholesome  and  normal. 
Church  and  State  are  alike  but  partial  organizations  of  hu- 
manity for  special  ends.  Together  they  serve  what  is  greater 
than  either :  humanity.  Their  common  aim  is  to  transform 
humanity  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 

Jesus  in  his  teachings  alluded  with  surprising  frequency  to 
the  use  and  abuse  of  intrusted  wealth  and  power.     In  the 


WHAT   TO   DO  381 

parables  of  the  talents  and  pounds  ^  he  evidently  meant  to  stewardship 
V  define  all  human  ability  and  opportunity  as  a  trust.  His  sWp.°^"^^" 
description  of  the  head  servant  who  is  made  confident  by 
the  continued  absence  of  his  master,  tyrannizes  over  his  sub- 
ordinates, and  fattens  his  paunch  on  his  master's  property, 
is  meant  to  show  the  temptation  which  besets  all  in  authority 
to  forget  the  responsibility  that  goes  with  power.^  His  por- 
trayal of  the  tricky  steward  who  is  to  be  dismissed  for  dis- 
honesty, but  manages  to  make  one  more  grand  coup  before 
his  authority  ends,  not  only  shows  the  keen  insight  of  Jesus 
into  the  ways  of  the  grafter,  but  also  shows  that  he  regarded 
all  men  of  wealth  as  stewards  of  the  property  they  hold.' 
The  parable  of  the  peasants  who  jointly  rent  a  vineyard  and 
then  try  to  do  their  absent  owner  not  only  out  of  his  rent, 
but  out  of  the  property  itself,  was  meant  by  Jesus  to  condense 
and  dramatize  the  whole  history  of  the  ruling  class  in  Israel.* 
The  illustration  of  the  fig  tree  which  has  had  all  possible 
advantages  of  soil  and  care  without  returning  fruit,  and  which 
merely  gets  a  year's  reprieve  through  the  hopeful  pleading 
of  the  gardener,  expresses  the  indignation  of  Jesus  against 
the  waste  of  intrusted  opportunity.^  The  terrible  invective 
against  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  is  directed  against  teachers 
who  had  misused  their  influence  to  darken  truth  and  leaders 
who  had  treated  their  leadership  as  a  chance  to  get  profit 
and  honor  for  themselves.® 

The  fact  that  Jesus  in  his  diagnosis  of  wrong  moral  rela- 
tions so  often  puts  his  finger  on  trust  abused  and  betrayed, 
is  proof  of  his  penetrating  social  insight.     Nearly  all  powers 

*  Matthew  25.  14-30;  Luke  19.  n-27.        *  Matthew  21.  33-46. 
'  Matthew  25.  45-51.  *  Luke  13.  6-9. 

*  Luke  16.  1-15.  '  Matthew  23. 


382  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

in  society  are  essentially  delegated  powers.  The  more  com- 
plex society  becomes,  the  less  will  it  be  possible  for  the  in- 
dividual to  attend  to  all  his  needs  himself,  and  the  more  will 
he  have  to  intrust  others  with  specialized  functions  and 
powers.  When  a  savage  killed  an  animal  for  food  and 
dressed  its  hide  for  clothing,  he  knew  what  he  was  getting. 
When  a  man  buys  canned  meat  and  a  ready-made  suit,  he 
has  to  trust  to  the  honesty  of  others  for  what  he  gets.  When 
a  man  deposits  money  in  a  savings  bank  or  pays  an  insurance 
premium,  he  exercises  trust.  When  he  engages  a  lawyer  to 
conduct  a  suit  or  search  a  title,  the  lawyer  is  a  steward  of 
intrusted  power.  When  he  submits  the  body  of  his  child  to 
a  surgeon's  knife,  or  its  intellect  to  a  school-teacher,  or  its 
soul  to  a  preacher,  he  trusts,  and  these  professional  men  are 
his  trustees.  Our  life  is  woven  through  with  such  relations. 
Trust  is  the  foundation  of  all  higher  social  hfe.  Life  is  good 
and  restful  in  the  measure  in  which  it  is  safe  to  trust.  Life 
turns  back  to  the  haunting  suspicion  and  fear  of  the  savage 
when  man  can  no  longer  safely  trust  man. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  more  complex  society  becomes,  the 
more  difficult  is  it  to  watch  over  the  fidelity  of  all  the  trustees, 
and  the  greater  is  the  temptation  of  a  trustee  or  steward  to 
divert  the  trust  to  his  own  use.  A  farming  community  in 
New  England  can  watch  how  the  selectmen  of  the  township 
use  their  delegated  powers.  The  ordinary  citizen  in  our 
great  cities  does  not  understand  the  machinery  of  the  govern- 
ment and  has  only  a  shadowy  idea  of  what  is  really  being 
done  by  public  officers  with  his  property  and  under  his 
authority.  He  is,  in  effect,  the  absentee  landlord  whose 
servants  are  made  bold  to  pilfer  and  cheat  because  the  eye 
of  the  owner  is  not  on  them. 


WHAT   TO    DO  383 

Moreover,  it  is  only  when  society  arrives  at  wealth  and 
power  that  "grafting"  comes  to  pay.  In  a  poor  and  savage 
community  the  individual  has  so  little  that  the  only  way 
to  get  wealth  without  work  is  by  downright  robbery  of  the 
weak.  As  the  average  of  wealth  rises,  and  the  aggregate  of 
wealth  becomes  more  enormous,  a  mere  "rake-off"  is  enough 
to  enrich  the  grafter.  Hence  in  a  savage  community  we  have 
robbers  and  bandit  chiefs ;  in  a  civilized  community  we  have 
a  parasitic  class  who  live  in  idleness  and  splendor  by  con- 
verting to  their  own  use  some  kind  of  intrusted  wealth  or 
delegated  power.  "Grafting"  is  a  highly  perfected  modern 
sin.  Its  essence  is  not  stealing,  but  the  corruption  of  a 
steward  by  one  party  and  the  betrayal  of  trust  by  a  second 
party,  who  together  profit  at  the  expense  of  a  third  party, 
most  frequently  the  pubUc. 

The  scale  on  which  the  parable  of  the  wicked  husbandmen 
has  been  reenacted  in  human  history  is  stupendous.  For 
instance,  the  king  or  duke  in  primitive  Teutonic  life  was 
simply  a  capable  man  chosen  for  temporary  leadership  in 
war.  This  temporary  power  tended  to  become  permanent. 
This  permanent  power  tended  to  become  hereditary.  Tenure 
by  capable  ser\dce  tended  to  become  tenure  "by  divine  right." 
The  limited  monarchy  tended  to  shake  off  its  limitations,  to 
suppress  coordinate  forces  of  government,  and  to  become 
absolutism.  When  Louis  XIV  asserted,  "L'Etat,  c'est  moi," 
the  steward  was  calmly  facing  the  owner  and  asserting  that 
the  owner  existed  by  leave  of  the  steward.  The  steward  had 
embezzled  the  property  so  long  that  the  relationship  between 
owner  and  steward  had  been  turned  upside  down  in  his  mind. 
When  Frederick  the  Great  of  Prussia  said,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  "the  king  is  the  foremost  servant  of  the  State,"  the  royal 


384  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

philosopher  felt  the  breath  of  the  coming  French  Revolution 
fanning  his  brow.  But  the  fact  that  so  obvious  a  truth  had 
to  be  stated  at  all  is  the  most  convincing  proof  that  the 
stewardship  of  kings  had  long  been  a  buried  idea.  The  great 
movement  of  modem  democracy,  which  is  still  so  far  from  its 
goal,  is  simply  an  effort  to  bring  one  set  of  faithless  stewards 
to  terms  and  restore  their  power  to  the  people  from  whom  it 
was  alienated. 

The  great  feudal  system,  under  which  mediaeval  society 
lived  and  did  business  just  as  we  live  under  capitalism,  was 
fundamentally  a  systematized  network  of  stewardship.  A 
great  noble  was  given  a  province  by  the  crown  on  condition 
that  he  render  certain  services,  usually  the  military  protection 
of  public  peace  and  safety.  He  in  turn  conferred  smaller 
domains  on  smaller  lords  under  similar  conditions.  But  just 
as  in  the  case  of  the  kings,  the  feudal  lords  tended  to  shake 
off  the  obligation  incurred  and  to  strengthen  their  hold  on 
the  power  conferred.  Feudal  stewardship  turned  into  owner- 
ship and  then  shifted  its  fundamental  military  duties  and 
taxes  on  other  classes  of  the  population,  until  the  people,  who 
were  the  owners  of  the  land,  sat  shivering  on  the  doorsteps 
of  the  stewards  and  made  obeisance  when  they  were  kicked. 

These  are  simply  two  illustrations  on  a  large  scale  to  show 
how  vast  have  been  the  embezzlements  of  power  from  the 
people,  and  what  a  long  historical  struggle  is  necessary  to 
oust  the  fraudulent  steward  and  regain  possession  for  the 
people.  It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  the  illustrations  from 
history.  It  is  more  to  the  point  to  mark  the  same  process 
to-day. 

When  a  public  officer  secures  government  positions  for  his 
relatives  or  for  those  who  worked  for  his  election,  or  succulent 


WHAT   TO    DO  385 

contracts  for  the  patriotic  business  men  who  put  up  campaign 
funds,  he  uses  the  property  of  the  people  to  pay  for  services 
rendered  to  himself.  That  is  essentially  embezzlement  by 
an  agent.  When  President  Cleveland  solemnly  announced 
that  "public  office  is  a  public  trust,"  it  was  greeted  as  a 
noble  assertion  of  a  great  principle.  What  would  be  the 
condition  of  mathematical  science  in  a  nation  if  the  solemn 
announcement  that  "two  times  two  is  four"  should  be  hailed 
as  an  enhghtening  utterance?  The  standard  of  honor  in 
public  life  has  fallen  so  low  in  our  country  that  it  is  very 
difficult  to  secure  the  conviction  of  even  flagrant  offenders 
because  the  official  world,  by  community  of  sin,  has  lost  its 
capacity  for  moral  indignation.  When  the  law  touches  one 
man  on  the  shoulder,  a  shiver  of  apprehension  runs  down  the 
whole  line.  Our  political  parties,  at  least  in  their  local  ad- 
ministration, are  largely  held  together  by  the  cohesive  neces- 
sities of  common  plunder.  Democracy  is  paralyzed  by  the 
party  managers.  The  owner  is  once  more  being  ousted  by 
the  steward. 

Our  public  service  corporations  exist  because  the  com- 
munity grants  them  the  use  of  public  property  and  exercises 
the  sovereign  right  of  eminent  domain  on  their  behalf.  They 
are  stewards  of  public  property  and  powers.  But  we  have 
all  seen  in  recent  years  that  they  have  been  very  close  to  for- 
getting that  they  are  stewards  and  have  acted  as  if  they  were 
the  owners.  The  present  movement  for  rate-regulation,  for 
instance,  is  simply  an  effort  to  assert  the  rights  of  the  owner 
over  the  steward,  and  the  aggrieved  astonishment  with  which 
this  movement  has  been  met  by  the  class  that  owns  the  rail- 
ways is  interesting  proof  that  the  usual  historical  process  was 
very  far  advanced. 


386  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

It  has  gone  much  farther  in  the  case  of  mining  rights.  Our 
laws  have  been  exceedingly  open-handed  to  those  who  dis- 
covered and  developed  the  mineral  resources  of  our  country. 
But  this  generosity  has  always  been  based  on  the  tacit  as- 
sumption that  it  was  a  good  thing  for  the  entire  community 
to  have  the  minerals  brought  out  and  cheapened,  and  that 
the  grantees  of  mining  rights  would  hasten  to  bring  them 
out  and  compete  in  selling  them.  Mining  rights  are  a  form 
of  public  franchise  and  are  conditioned  on  public  service.  It 
is  preposterous  to  think  that  an  individual  or  a  corporation 
can  ever  have  absolute  ownership  in  a  vein  of  coal  or  copper. 
A  mining  company  owns  the  holes  in  the  ground,  for  it  made 
the  holes;  it  does  not  own  the  coal,  for  it  did  not  make  the 
coal.  The  coal  is  the  gift  of  God  and  belongs  to  the  people. 
If  the  people  intrust  the  mining  of  the  coal  to  any  one,  it  is 
a  delegated  right  and  can  be  recalled  if  the  stewardship  is 
abused.  If  mining  rights  are  now  used  to  keep  coal  in  and 
make  it  dear,  instead  of  bringing  coal  out  and  making  it 
cheap,  that  would  be  ample  moral  ground  for  cancelling  all 
rights. 

The  present  movement  for  federal  and  state  interference 
and  control  over  corporations,  of  which  President  Roosevelt 
is  the  most  eminent  exponent  and  leader,  is  an  effort  to  re- 
assert the  ownership  and  mastership  of  the  people  and  to 
force  these  stewards  of  public  powers  back  into  the  position 
of  public  servants.  The  next  decade  will  probably  show 
whether  they  are  willing  to  take  the  position  of  well-paid 
servants  and  cease  from  ousting  the  owner.  If  not,  the 
people  will  have  to  say,  "Render  the  account  of  thy  stew- 
ardship, for  thou  canst  no  longer  be  steward." 

This  movement  is  of  far-reaching  historical  significance. 


WHAT    TO    DO  387 

It  could  be  immensely  quickened  if  the  moral  forces  of  the 
community  would  strengthen  it  by  stiffening  public  sentiment 
on  stewardship.  The  Church  should  turn  whatever  advanced 
moral  insight  it  possesses,  like  a  searchlight,  on  everything 
that  claims  to  be  ownership  and  scrutinize  it  to  see  if  it  is 
not  in  fact  merely  stewardship  which  has  thrown  off  its 
responsibility  and  is  running  away  with  the  property.  It  is 
said  that  all  the  cordage  used  by  the  English  navy  has  a  red 
thread  running  through  the  hemp,  which  proves  that  it  is 
public  property  wherever  it  may  be  found.  It  would  be  in- 
teresting if  the  rigging  of  our  private  commercial  craft  could 
be  overhauled  to  find  the  red  thread  of  public  ownership. 
We  all  draw  our  life,  our  safety,  our  intellect,  our  informa- 
tion, our  organizing  ability,  from  the  common  fund  of  the 
community,  and  we  have  not  paid  our  obligations  when  we 
have  settled  our  tax  bill.  The  community  could  well  turn 
on  each  of  us  and  ask :  "What  hast  thou  that  thou  didst  not 
receive  ?  But  if  thou  didst  receive  it,  why  doest  thou  boast 
as  if  thou  hadst  not  received  it?" 

The  doctrine  of  "  Christian  stewardship"  has  been  strongly 
emphasized  in  church  life  in  recent  years,  but  mainly  from 
the  churchly  point  of  view.  It  is  a  new  formula  designed  to 
give  our  modem  men  of  wealth  a  stronger  sense  of  respon- 
sibility and  to  induce  them  to  give  more  largely  to  the  Church 
and  its  work.  But  if  a  rich  man  withdraws  a  million  from 
commerce  and  gives  it  to  a  missionary  society  or  a  college, 
that  simply  shifts  the  money  from  one  steward  to  another, 
and  from  one  line  of  usefulness  to  another.  The  ecclesias- 
tical idea  of  stewardship  needs  to  be  intensified  and  broadened 
by  the  democratic  idea.  Every  man  who  holds  wealth  or 
power  is  not  only  a  steward  of  God,  but  a  steward  of  the 


388  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

people.  He  derives  it  from  the  people  and  he  holds  it  in 
trust  for  the  people.  If  he  converts  it  to  his  own  use,  the 
people  can  justly  call  him  to  account  in  the  court  of  public 
opinion  and  in  the  courts  of  law.  If  the  law  has  hitherto 
given  an  absolute  title  to  certain  forms  of  property  and  has 
neglected  to  insist  on  the  ingredient  of  public  property  and 
rights  involved  in  it,  that  does  not  settle  the  moral  title  in  the 
least.  The  people  may  at  any  time  challenge  the  title  and 
resume  its  forgotten  rights  by  more'  searching  laws.  The 
Christian  Church  could  make  a  splendid  contribution  to  the 
new  social  justice  if  it  assisted  in  pointing  out  the  latent 
public  rights  and  in  quickening  the  conscience  of  stewards 
who  have  forgotten  their  stewardship.  In  turn,  the  religious 
sense  of  stewardship  would  be  reenforced  by  the  increased 
sense  of  social  obligation.  Our  laws  and  social  institutions 
have  so  long  taught  men  that  their  property  is  their  own, 
and  that  they  can  do  what  they  will  with  their  own,  that  the 
Church  has  uphill  work  in  teaching  that  they  are  not  owners, 
but  administrators.  Our  industrial  individualism  neutralizes 
the  social  consciousness  created  by  Christianity. 

Solidarity  It  is  assumed  as  almost  self-evident  in  popular  thought  that 
munism!"  communism  is  impracticable  and  inefficient,  an  antiquated 
method  of  the  past  or  a  dream  of  Utopian  schemers,  a  system 
of  society  sure  to  impede  economic  development  and  to  fetter 
individual  liberty  and  initiative.  Thus  we  flout  what  was 
the  earliest  basis  of  civilization  for  the  immense  majority  of 
mankind  and  the  moral  ideal  of  Christendom  during  the 
greater  part  of  its  history.  Communistic  ownership  and 
management  of  the  fundamental  means  of  production  was 
the  rule  in  primitive  society,  and  large  remnants  of  it  have 


WHAT   TO   DO  389 

survived  to  our  day.  For  fifteen  centuries  and  more  it  was 
the  common  consent  of  Christendom  that  private  property 
was  due  to  sin,  and  that  the  ideal  life  involved  fraternal 
sharing.  The  idea  underlying  the  monastic  life  was  that 
men  left  the  sinful  world  and  established  an  ideal  community, 
and  communism  was  an  essential  feature  of  every  monastic 
establishment.  The  progressive  heretical  movements  in  the 
Middle  Ages  also  usually  involved  an  attempt  to  get  closer 
to  the  communistic  ideal.  It  is  a  striking  proof  how  deeply 
the  ideas  of  the  Church  have  always  been  affected  by  the 
current  secular  thought,  that  our  modem  individualism  has 
been  able  to  wipe  this  immemorial  Christian  social  ideal  out 
of  the  mind  of  the  modem  Church  almost  completely. 

The  assumption  that  communistic  ownership  was  a  hin- 
drance to  progress  deserves  very  critical  scrutiny.  It  is  part 
of  that  method  of  writing  history  which  exalted  the  doings 
of  kings  and  slighted  the  hfe  of  the  people.  For  the  grasping 
arm  of  the  strong,  communistic  institutions  were  indeed  a 
most  objectionable  hindrance,  but  to  the  common  man  they 
were  the  strongest  bulwark  of  his  independence  and  vigor. 
Within  the  shelter  of  the  old-fashioned  village  community, 
which  constituted  a  social  unit  for  military  protection, 
economic  production,  morality,  and  rehgion,  the  individual 
could  enjoy  his  life  with  some  fearlessness.  The  peasant 
who  stood  alone  was  at  the  mercy  of  his  lord.  Primitive 
village  communism  was  not  freely  abandoned  as  an  ineffi- 
cient system,  but  was  broken  up  by  the  covetousness  of  the 
strong  and  selfish  members  of  the  community,  and  by  the 
encroachments  of  the  upper  classes  who  wrested  the  common 
pasture  and  forest  and  game  from  the  peasant  communities. 
Its  disappearance  nearly  everywhere  marked  a  decline  in 


390  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  prosperity  and  moral  vigor  of  the  peasantry  and  was  felt 
by  them  to  be  a  calamity  and  a  step  in  their  enslavement. 

But  we  need  not  go  back  into  history  to  get  a  juster  verdict 
on  the  practicability  and  usefulness  of  communism.  We 
have  the  material  right  among  us.  Ask  any  moral  teacher 
who  is  scouting  communism  and  glorifying  individualism, 
what  social  institutions  to-day  are  most  important  for  the 
moral  education  of  mankind  and  most  beneficent  in  their 
influence  on  human  happiness,  and  he  will  probably  reply 
promptly,  "The  home,  the  school,  and  the  church."  But 
these  three  are  communistic  institutions.  The  home  is  the 
source  of  most  of  our  happiness  and  goodness,  and  in  the 
home  we  live  communistically.  Each  member  of  the  family 
has  some  private  property,  clothes,  letters,  pictures,  toys; 
but  the  rooms  and  the  furniture  in  the  main  are  common  to 
all,  and  if  one  member  needs  the  private  property  of  another, 
there  is  ready  sharing.  The  income  of  the  members  is  more 
or  less  turned  into  a  common  fund;  food  is  prepared  and 
eaten  in  common ;  the  larger  family  undertakings  are  planned 
in  common.  The  housewife  is  the  manager  of  a  successful 
communistic  colony,  and  it  is  perhaps  not  accidental  that  our 
women,  who  move  thus  within  a  fraternal  organization,  are 
the  chief  stays  of  our  Christianity.  Similarly  our  public 
schools  are  supported  on  a  purely  communistic  basis;  those 
who  have  no  children  or  whose  children  are  grown  up,  are 
nevertheless  taxed  for  the  education  of  the  children  of 
the  community.  The  desks,  the  books  to  some  extent,  the 
flowers  and  decorations,  are  common  property,  and  it  is  the 
aim  of  the  teachers  to  develop  the  communistic  spirit  in  the 
children,  though  they  may  not  call  it  by  that  name.  Our 
churches,  too,  are  voluntary  communisms.     A  number  of 


WHAT   TO    DO  391 

people  get  together,  have  a  common  building,  common  seats, 
common  hymn-books  and  Bibles,  support  a  pastor  in  com- 
mon, and  worship,  learn,  work,  and  play  in  common.  They 
are  so  little  individualistic  that  they  fairly  urge  others  to 
come  in  and  use  their  property.  Private  pews  and  similar 
encroachments  of  private  property  within  this  communistic 
institution  are  now  generally  condemned  as  contrary  to  the 
spirit  of  the  Church,  while  every  new  step  to  widen  the  com- 
munistic serviceableness  of  the  churches  is  greeted  with  a 
glow  of  enthusiasm. 

Thus  the  three  great  institutions  on  which  we  mainly  de- 
pend to  train  the  young  to  a  moral  life  and  to  make  us  all 
good,  wise,  and  happy,  are  essentially  communistic,  and  their 
success  and  efBciency  depend  on  the  continued  mastery  of 
the  spirit  of  solidarity  and  brotherhood  within  them.  It  is 
nothing  short  of  funny  to  hear  the  very  men  who  ceaselessly 
glorify  the  home,  the  school,  and  the  church,  turn  around  and 
abuse  communism. 

It  can  fairly  be  maintained,  too,  that  the  State,  another  great 
moral  agent,  is  communistic  in  its  very  nature.  It  is  the 
organization  by  which  the  people  administer  their  common 
property  and  attend  to  their  common  interests.  It  is  safe  to 
say  that  at  least  a  fourth  of  the  land  in  a  modem  city  is  owned 
by  the  city  and  communist ically  used  for  free  streets  and  free 
parks.  Our  modem  State  is  the  outcome  of  a  long  develop- 
ment toward  communism.  Warfare  and  military  defence 
were  formerly  the  private  affair  of  the  nobles ;  they  are  now 
the  business  of  the  entire  nation.  Roads  and  bridges  used 
to  be  owned  largely  by  private  persons  or  corporations,  and 
toll  charged  for  their  use ;  they  are  now  communistic  with 
rare  exceptions.     Putting  out  fires  used  to  be  left  to  private 


392  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

enterprise;  to-day  our  fire  departments  are  communistic. 
Schools  used  to  be  private;  they  are  now  public.  Great 
men  formerly  had  private  parks  and  admitted  the  public  as 
a  matter  of  favor;  the  people  now  have  public  parks  and 
admit  the  great  men  as  a  matter  of  right.  The  right  of 
jurisdiction  was  formerly  often  an  appurtenance  of  the  great 
landowners ;  it  is  now  controlled  by  the  people.  The  public 
spirit  and  foresight  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  Americans, 
Benjamin  Franklin,  early  made  the  postal  service  of  our  coun- 
try a  communistic  institution  of  ever  increasing  magnitude 
and  usefulness.  In  no  case  in  which  communistic  ownership 
has  firmly  established  itself  is  there  any  desire  to  recede  from 
it.  The  unrest  and  dissatisfaction  is  all  at  those  points  where 
the  State  is  not  yet  communistic.  The  water-works  in  most 
of  our  cities  are  owned  and  operated  by  the  community,  and 
there  is  never  more  than  local  and  temporary  dissatisfaction 
about  this  great  necessity  of  life,  because  any  genuine  com- 
plaint by  the  people  as  users  of  water  can  be  promptly 
remedied  by  the  people  as  suppliers  of  water.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  clamor  of  public  complaint  about  the  gas,  the 
electric  power  and  light,  and  the  street  railway  service,  which 
are  commonly  supplied  by  private  companies,  is  incessant  and 
increasing.  While  the  railway  lines  were  competing,  they 
wasted  on  needless  parallel  roads  enough  capital  to  build 
a  comfortable  home  for  every  family  in  the  country.  Now 
that  they  have  nearly  ceased  to  compete,  the  grievances 
of  their  monopoly  are  among  the  gravest  problems  of  our 
national  life.  The  competitive  duplication  of  plant  and 
labor  by  our  express  companies  is  folly,  and  their  exorbitant 
charges  are  a  drag  on  the  economic  welfare  and  the  common 
comfort  of  our  whole  nation.     This  condition  continues  not 


WHAT   TO   DO  393 

because  of  their  efficiency,  but  because  of  their  sinister  in- 
fluence on  Congress.    They  are  an  economic  anachronism. 

Thus  the  State,  too,  is  essentially  a  communistic  institution. 
It  has  voluntarily  limited  its  functions  and  left  many  things 
to  private  initiative.  The  political  philosophy  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  constantly  preached  to  the  State  that  the  best 
State  was  that  which  governed  least,  just  as  the  best  child 
was  that  which  moved  least.  Yet  it  has  almost  imperceptibly 
gathered  to  itself  many  of  the  functions  which  were  formerly 
exercised  by  private  undertakings,  and  there  is  no  desire  any- 
where to  turn  public  education,  fire  protection,  sanitation,  or 
the  supply  of  water  over  to  private  concerns.  But  the  dis- 
tinctively modem  utilities,  which  have  been  invented  or 
perfected  during  the  reign  of  capitalism  and  during  the  prev- 
alence of  individualistic  political  theories,  have  been  seized 
and  appropriated  by  private  concerns.  The  railways,  the 
street  railways,  the  telegraph  and  telephone,  electric  power 
and  light,  gas  —  these  are  all  modern.  The  swift  hand  of 
capitalism  seized  them  and  has  exploited  them  to  its  immense 
profit.  Other  countries  have  long  ago  begun  to  draw  these 
modem  public  necessities  within  the  communistic  functions 
of  the  State.  In  our  country  a  variety  of  causes,  good  and 
bad,  have  combined  to  check  that  process ;  but  the  trend  is 
manifestly  in  the  direction  of  giving  state  communism  a  wider 
sweep  hereafter. 

Private  ownership  is  not  a  higher  stage  of  social  organiza- 
tion which  has  finally  and  forever  superseded  communism, 
but  an  intermediate  and  necessary  stage  of  social  evolution 
between  two  forms  of  communism.  At  a  certain  point  in  the 
development  of  property  primitive  communism  becomes  un- 
workable, and  a  higher  form  of  communism  has  not  yet  been 


394  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

wrought  out;  consequently  men  manage  as  best  they  can 
with  private  ownership.  To  take  a  simple  illustration:  on 
the  farm  or  in  a  country  village  the  creek  is  common  property 
for  bathing  purposes;  the  " swimmin'-hole "  is  the  communis- 
tic bath-tub  for  all  who  want  to  refresh  their  cuticle.  As  the 
village  grows,  the  march  of  the  houses  drives  the  bathers 
farther  out;  the  pervasiveness  of  the  "eternally  feminine" 
robs  the  boys  of  their  bath ;  the  primitive  communism  of  the 
water  ceases.  Some  families  now  are  wealthy  enough  to 
install  private  bath-tubs  and  have  the  increased  privilege  of 
bathing  all  the  year  around.  The  bulk  of  the  people  in  the 
cities  have  no  bathing  facilities  at  all.  At  last  an  agitation 
arises  for  a  public  bath.  A  beginning  is  made  with  enclosed 
river-baths,  perhaps,  or  with  shower-baths.  At  last  a  plunge- 
bath  is  built  and  opened  summer  and  winter.  The  bathing 
instinct  of  the  community  revives  and  increasingly  centres 
about  the  public  bath.  The  communism  of  the  water  has 
returned.  From  the  communistic  swimming-hole  to  the  mar- 
ble splendor  of  the  communistic  bath  the  way  lay  through 
the  individualistic  tub  of  the  wealthy  and  the  unwashed 
deprivations  of  the  mass.  In  the  same  way  there  is  no  need 
of  parks  in  primitive  society,  because  all  nature  is  open.  As 
cities  grow  up,  the  country  recedes ;  a  few  are  wealthy  enough 
to  surround  their  homes  with  lawns  and  trees ;  the  mass  are 
shut  off  from  nature  and  suffocate  amid  brick  and  asphalt. 
Then  comes  the  new  communal  ownership  and  enjoyment  of 
nature :  first  the  small  square  in  the  city ;  then  the  large  park 
on  the  outskirts;  then  the  distant  park  on  the  seashore  or 
by  the  river  and  lake ;  and  finally  the  state  or  national  reser- 
vation where  wild  life  is  kept  intact  for  those  who  want  to 
revert  to  it.     Thus  we  pass  from  communism  to  communism 


WHAT   TO    DO  395 

in  our  means  of  enjoyment,  and  that  community  will  evidently 
be  wisest  which  most  quickly  sees  that  the  old  and  simple 
means  of  pleasure  are  passing,  and  will  provide  the  corre- 
sponding means  for  the  more  complex  and  artificial  commu- 
nity which  is  evolving.  The  longer  it  lingers  in  the  era  of 
private  self-help,  the  longer  will  the  plain  people  be  deprived 
of  their  heritage,  and  the  more  completely  will  the  wealthy 
minority  preempt  the  means  of  enjoyment  for  themselves. 

Everywhere  communism  in  new  forms  and  on  a  vaster 
scale  is  coming  back  to  us.  The  individualistic  pump  in 
the  back  yard  is  gone ;  the  city  water-works  are  the  modem 
counterpart  of  the  communistic  village  well  to  which  Rebekah 
and  Rachel  came  to  fill  their  water-jar.  The  huge  irrigation 
scheme  of  our  national  government  in  the  West  is  an  en- 
larged duplicate  of  the  tanks  built  by  many  a  primitive  com- 
munity. The  railway  train  carrying  people  or  supplies  is  a 
modernized  form  of  the  tribe  breaking  camp  and  carrying 
its  women  and  children  and  cattle  and  tents  to  better  grazing 
or  hunting  grounds.  Compared  with  the  old  private  vehicle, 
the  railway  carriage  is  a  triumphant  demonstration  of  com- 
munism. Almost  the  only  private  thing  about  our  railways 
is  the  dividends.  The  competitive  individualism  of  commerce 
is  being  restricted  within  ever  narrower  limits.  State  super- 
vision and  control  is  a  partial  assertion  of  the  supremacy  of 
communistic  interests.  It  is  probably  only  a  question  of 
time  when  the  private  management  of  public  necessities  will 
be  felt  to  be  impossible  and  antiquated,  and  the  community 
will  begin  to  experiment  seriously  with  the  transportation  of 
people  and  goods,  and  with  the  public  supply  of  light  and 
heat  and  cold. 

How  far  this  trend  toward  communistic  ownership  is  to  go, 


396  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

the  common  sense  of  the  future  will  have  to  determine.  It 
is  entirely  misleading  to  frighten  us  with  the  idea  that  com- 
munism involves  a  complete  abolition  of  private  property. 
Even  in  the  most  individualistic  society  there  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  large  ingredient  of  communism,  and  in  the  most 
socialistic  society  there  will  always  be  a  large  ingredient  of 
private  property.  No  one  supposes  that  a  man's  toothbrush, 
his  love-letters,  or  the  shirt  on  his  back  would  ever  be  com- 
mon property.  Socialists  are  probably  quite  right  in  main- 
taining that  the  amount  of  private  property  per  capita  in  a 
prosperous  socialist  community  would  be  much  larger  than 
it  is  now.  It  seems  unlikely  even  that  all  capital  used  in 
production  will  ever  be  communistic  in  ownership  and  opera- 
tion ;  a  socialistic  State  could  easily  afford  to  allow  individuals 
to  continue  some  private  production,  just  as  handicraft  lingers 
now  amid  machine  production.  It  will  never  be  a  question 
of  having  either  private  property  absolute  or  communism 
absolute;  it  will  always  be  a  question  of  having  more  com- 
munism or  less. 

The  question  then  confronts  Christian  men  singly  and  the 
Christian  Church  collectively,  whether  they  will  favor  and 
aid  this  trend  toward  communism,  or  oppose  it.  Down  to 
modem  times,  as  we  have  seen,  the  universal  judgment  of 
Christian  thought  was  in  favor  of  communism  as  more  in 
harmony  with  the  genius  of  Christianity  and  with  the  classical 
precedents  of  its  early  social  life.  Simultaneously  with  the 
rise  of  capitalism  that  conviction  began  to  fade  out.  Prot- 
estantism especially,  by  its  intimate  alliance  with  the  grow- 
ing cities  and  the  rising  business  class,  has  been  individualistic 
in  its  theories  of  Christian  society.  The  question  is  now, 
how  quickly  Christian  thought  will  realize  that  individualism 


WHAT    TO    DO  397 

is  coming  to  be  an  inadequate  and  antiquated  form  of  social 
organization  which  must  give  place  to  a  higher  form  of  com- 
munistic organization,  and  how  thoroughly  it  will  compre- 
hend that  this  new  communism  will  afford  a  far  nobler  social 
basis  for  the  spiritual  temple  of  Christianity. 

For  there  cannot  really  be  any  doubt  that  the  spirit  of 
Christianity  has  more  affinity  for  a  social  system  based  on 
solidarity  and  human  fraternity  than  for  one  based  on  selfish- 
ness and  mutual  antagonism.  In  competitive  industry  one 
man  may  profit  through  the  ruin  of  others;  in  cooperative 
production  the  wealth  of  one  man  would  depend  on  the  grow- 
ing wealth  of  all.  In  competitive  society  each  man  strives 
for  himself  and  his  family  only,  and  the  sense  of  larger  duties 
is  attenuated  and  feeble;  in  communistic  society  no  man 
could  help  realizing  that  he  is  part  of  a  great  organization, 
and  that  he  owes  it  duty  and  loyalty.  Competition  tends  to 
make  good  men  selfish;  cooperation  would  compel  selfish 
men  to  develop  public  spirit.  The  moral  and  wholesome 
influences  in  society  to-day  proceed  from  the  communistic 
organizations  within  it;  the  divisive,  anarchic,  and  destruc- 
tive influences  which  are  racking  our  social  body  to-day  pro- 
ceed from  those  realms  of  social  life  which  are  individualistic 
and  competitive.  Business  life  to-day  is  organized  in  grow- 
ing circles  within  which  a  certain  amount  of  cooperation  and 
mutual  helpfulness  exists,  and  to  that  extent  it  exerts  a  sound 
moral  influence.  In  so  far  as  it  is  really  competitive,  it  en- 
genders covetousness,  cunning,  hardness,  selfish  satisfaction 
in  success,  or  resentment  and  despair  in  failure.  It  is  a 
marvellous  demonstration  of  the  vitality  of  human  goodness 
that  a  system  so  calculated  to  bring  out  the  evil  traits  in  us, 
still  leaves  so  much  human  kindness  and  nobility  ahve.    But 


398  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL    CRISIS 

the  Christian  temper  of  mind,  the  honest  regard  for  the 
feehngs  and  the  welfare  of  others,  the  desire  to  make  our  life 
serve  the  common  good,  would  get  its  first  chance  to  control 
our  social  life  in  a  society  organized  on  the  basis  of  solidarity 
and  cooperation. 

It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  one  of  the  greatest  services 
which  Christianity  could  render  to  humanity  in  the  throes  of 
the  present  transition  would  be  to  aid  those  social  forces 
which  are  making  for  the  increase  of  communism.  The 
Church  should  help  public  opinion  to  understand  clearly  the 
difiference  between  the  moral  qualities  of  the  competitive  and 
the  communistic  principle,  and  enlist  religious  enthusiasm  on 
behalf  of  that  which  is  essentially  Christian.  Christian  in- 
dividuals should  strengthen  and  protect  the  communistic 
institutions  already  in  existence  in  society  and  help  them  to 
extend  their  functions.  For  instance,  the  public  schools  can 
increasingly  be  made  nuclei  of  common  life  for  the  district 
within  which  they  are  located,  gathering  the  children  for  play 
out  of  school  hours,  and  the  adults  for  instruction,  discussion, 
and  social  pleasure  in  the  evenings.  The  usefulness  of  the 
public  parks  as  centres  of  communal  life  can  be  immensely 
extended  by  encouraging  and  organizing  the  play  of  the  chil- 
dren and  by  holding  regular  public  festivals.  Simply  to  in- 
duce the  crowd  listening  to  a  band  concert  in  the  park  to 
join  in  singing  a  patriotic  song,  would  convert  a  mass  of 
listening  individuals  into  a  social  organism  thrilled  with  a 
common  joy  and  sensible  of  its  cohesion.  Public  ownership 
of  the  great  public  utilities  would  be  desirable  for  the  educa- 
tion it  would  give  in  solidarity,  if  for  no  other  reason.  Even 
if  a  street  railway  should  be  run  at  a  loss  for  a  time  under 
city  management,  it  would  at  least  draw  the  people  closer 


WHAT   TO    DO  399 

together  by  the  sense  of  common  propr-etorship  and  would 
teach  them  to  work  better  together  to  overcome  the  trouble. 
Every  step  taken  in  industrial  life  to  give  the  employees  some 
proprietary  rights  in  the  business,  and  anything  placing  own- 
ers and  employees  on  a  footing  of  human  equality,  would 
deserve  commendation  and  help. 

The  Christian  spirit  of  fraternity  should  create  fraternal 
social  institutions,  and  the  fraternal  institutions  may  in  turn 
be  trusted  to  breed  and  spread  the  fraternal  spirit.  It  is  a 
most  hopeful  fact  that  the  communistic  features  of  our  govern- 
ment are  awakening  in  some  public  officials  a  whole-hearted 
and  far-seeing  devotion  to  the  public  welfare.  A  number  of 
our  public  health  officers  have  thrown  themselves  into  the 
crusade  against  tuberculosis  and  infant  mortality  with  a  zeal 
more  far-sighted  and  chivalrous  than  is  usually  called  out  in 
the  ordinary  doctor  who  cures  patients  on  the  individualistic 
plan.  When  men  at  the  head  of  some  department  of  city 
government  realize  the  immense  latent  capacity  of  their  de- 
partment to  serve  the  people,  they  are  fired  with  ambition  to 
do  what  they  see  can  be  done.  Their  natural  ambition  to 
make  themselves  felt,  to  exert  power  and  get  honor,  runs  in 
the  same  direction  with  the  public  needs.  Such  men  are  still 
scarce,  but  they  are  a  prophecy  of  the  kind  of  character  which 
may  be  created  in  a  communistic  society  and  of  the  power  of 
enthusiastic  work  which  may  hereafter  be  summoned  to  the 
service  of  the  people.  The  vast  educational  work  done  by 
some  departments  of  our  national  government,  for  instance 
the  Department  of  Agriculture,  furnishes  similar  proof  of 
what  may  be  done  when  we  abandon  the  policeman  theory 
of  government  and  adopt  the  family  theory.  Certainly  it 
would  be  no  betrayal  of  the  Christian  spirit  to  enter  into  a 


400  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

working  alliance  with  this  great  tendency  toward  the  creation 
of  cooperative  and  communistic  social  institutions  based  on 
the  broad  principle  of  the  brotherhood  of  men  and  the  soli- 
darity of  their  interests. 

The  upward  v  The  ideal  of  a  fraternal  organization  of  society  is  so  splendid 
S°the'v^ork-  ^^^^  ^^  ^^  to-day  enlisting  the  choicest  young  minds  of  the  intel- 
ing  class.  lectual  classes  under  its  banner.  Idealists  everywhere  are 
surrendering  to  it,  especially  those  who  are  under  the  power 
of  the  ethical  spirit  of  Christianity.  The  influence  which 
these  idealists  exert  in  reenforcing  the  movement  toward 
solidarity  is  beyond  computation.  They  impregnate  the 
popular  mind  with  faith  and  enthusiasm.  They  furnish  the 
watch-words  and  the  intellectual  backing  of  historical  and 
scientific  information.  They  supply  devoted  leaders  and 
give  a  lofty  sanction  to  the  movement  by  their  presence  in  it. 
They  diminish  the  resistance  of  the  upper  classes  among 
whom  they  spread  their  ideas. 

But  we  must  not  blink  the  fact  that  the  idealists  alone  have 
never  carried  through  any  great  social  change.  In  vain  they 
dash  their  fair  ideas  against  the  solid  granite  of  human  selfish- 
ness. The  possessing  classes  are  strong  by  mere  possession 
long-continued.  They  control  nearly  all  property.  The  law 
is  on  their  side,  for  they  have  made  it.  They  control  the 
machinery  of  government  and  can  use  force  under  the  form 
of  law.  Their  self-interest  makes  them  almost  impervious 
to  moral  truth  if  it  calls  in  question  the  sources  from  which 
they  draw  their  income.  In  the  past  they  have  laughed  at 
the  idealists  if  they  seemed  harmless,  or  have  suppressed 
them  if  they  became  troublesome. 

We  Americans  have  a  splendid  moral  optimism.    We  be- 


WHAT   TO    DO  401 

lieve  that  "truth  is  mighty  and  must  prevail."  "Truth 
crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again."  "The  blood  of  the 
martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the  Church."  In  the  words  of  the 
great  Anabaptist  Balthasar  Hiibmaier,  who  attested  his  faith 
by  martyrdom,  "  Truth  is  immortal ;  and  though  for  a  long 
time  she  be  imprisoned,  scourged,  crowned  with  thorns, 
crucified  and  buried,  she  will  yet  rise  victorious  on  the  third 
day  and  will  reign  and  triumph."  That  is  a  glorious  faith. 
But  the  three  days  may  be  three  centuries,  and  the  murdered 
truth  may  never  rise  again  in  the  nation  that  crucified  it,  but 
may  come  to  victory  in  some  other  race  and  on  another 
continent.  The  Peasants'  Rising  in  1525  in  Germany  em- 
bodied the  social  ideals  of  the  common  people;  the  Ana- 
baptist movement,  which  began  simultaneously,  expressed 
their  religious  aspirations;  both  were  essentially  noble  and 
just ;  both  have  been  most  amply  justified  by  the  later  course 
of  history;  yet  both  were  quenched  in  streams  of  blood  and 
have  had  to  wait  till  our  own  day  for  their  resurrection  in  new 
form. 

Truth  is  mighty.  But  for  a  definite  historical  victor)'  a 
given  truth  must  depend  on  the  class  which  makes  that  truth 
its  own  and  fights  for  it.  If  that  class  is  sufl5ciently  numer- 
ous, compact,  intelligent,  organized,  and  conscious  of  what  it 
wants,  it  may  drive  a  breach  through  the  intrenchments  of 
those  opposed  to  it  and  carry  the  cause  to  victory.  If  there 
is  no  such  army  to  fight  its  cause,  the  truth  will  drive  in- 
dividuals to  a  comparatively  fruitless  martyrdom  and  will 
continue  to  hover  over  humanity  as  a  disembodied  ideal. 
There  were  a  number  of  reformatory  movements  before  1500 
which  looked  fully  as  promising  and  powerful  as  did  the 
movement  led  by  Luther  in  its  early  years ;  but  the  fortified 


402  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

authority  of  the  papacy  and  clergy  succeeded  in  frustrating 
them,  and  they  ebbed  away  again.  The  Lutheran  and  Cal- 
vinistic  Reformation  succeeded  because  they  enlisted  classes 
which  were  sufficiently  strong  politically  and  economically  to 
defend  the  cause  of  Reformed  Religion.  It  was  only  when 
concrete  material  interests  entered  into  a  working  alliance 
with  Truth  that  enough  force  was  rallied  to  break  down  the 
frowning  walls  of  error.  On  the  other  hand,  the  classes 
within  which  Anabaptism  gained  lodgement  lacked  that 
concrete  power,  and  so  the  Anabaptist  movement,  which 
promised  for  a  short  time  to  be  the  real  Reformation  of  Ger- 
many, just  as  it  came  to  be  the  real  Reformation  of  England 
in  the  Commonwealth,  died  a  useless  and  despised  death.  In 
the  French  Revolution  the  ideal  of  democracy  won  a  great 
victory,  not  simply  because  the  ideal  was  so  fair,  but  be- 
cause it  represented  the  concrete  interests  of  the  strong, 
wealthy,  and  intelligent  business  class,  and  that  class  was 
able  to  wrest  political  control  from  the  king,  the  aristocracy, 
and  the  clergy. 

The  question  is  whether  the  ideal  of  cooperation  and 
economic  fraternity  can  to-day  depend  on  any  great  and 
conquering  class  whose  self-interest  is  bound  up  with  the 
victory  of  that  principle.  It  is  hopeless  to  expect  the  busi- 
ness class  to  espouse  that  principle  as  a  class.  Individuals 
in  the  business  class  will  do  so,  but  the  class  will  not.  There 
is  no  historical  precedent  for  an  altruistic  self-effacement  of  a 
whole  class.  Of  the  professional  class  it  is  safe  to  expect 
that  an  important  minority  —  perhaps  a  larger  minority  in 
our  country  than  in  any  country  heretofore  —  will  range 
themselves  under  the  new  social  ideal.  With  them  especially 
the  factor  of  religion  will  prove  of  immense  power.     But 


WHAT   TO    DO  403 

their  motives  will  in  the  main  be  idealistic,  and  in  the  present 
stage  of  man's  moral  development  the  unselfish  emotions  are 
fragile  and  easily  chafe  through,  unless  the  coarse  fibre  of 
self-interest  is  woven  into  them.  But  there  is  another  class 
to  which  that  conception  of  organized  fraternity  is  not  only 
a  moral  ideal,  but  the  hope  for  bread  and  butter ;  with  which 
it  enlists  not  only  religious  devotion  and  self-sacrifice,  but 
involves  salvation  from  poverty  and  insecurity  and  participa- 
tion in  the  wealth  and  culture  of  modem  life  for  themselves 
and  their  children. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  regard  the  French  Revolution  as  a  move- 
ment of  the  poor.  The  poor  fought  in  the  uprising,  but  the 
movement  got  its  strength,  its  purpose,  and  its  direction  from 
the  "third  estate,"  the  bourgeoisie,  the  business  class  of  the 
cities,  and  they  alone  drew  lasting  profit  from  it.  That  class 
had  been  slowly  rising  to  wealth,  education,  and  power  for 
several  centuries,  and  the  democratic  movement  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  has  in  the  main  been  their  march  to  complete 
ascendency. 

During  the  same  period  we  can  watch  the  slow  develop- 
ment of  a  new  class,  which  has  been  called  the  fourth  estate : 
the  city  working  class,  the  wage-workers.  They  form  a  dis- 
tinct class,  all  living  without  capital  merely  by  the  sale  of 
their  labor,  working  and  living  under  similar  physical  and 
social  conditions  everywhere,  with  the  same  economic  interests 
and  the  same  points  of  view.  They  present  a  fairly  homo- 
geneous body  and  if  any  section  of  the  people  forms  a  "class," 
they  do.  The  massing  of  labor  in  the  factories  since  the  in- 
troduction of  power  machinery  has  brought  them  into  close 
contact  with  one  another.  Hard  experience  has  taught  them 
how  helpless  they  are  when  they  stand  alone.    They  have 


404  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

begun  to  realize  their  solidarity  and  the  divergence  of  their 
interests  from  those  of  the  employers.  They  have  begun  to 
organize  and  are  slowly  learning  to  act  together.  The  spread 
of  education  and  cheap  literature,  the  ease  of  communica- 
tion, and  the  freedom  of  public  meeting  have  rapidly  created 
a  common  body  of  ideas  and  points  of  view  among  them. 

V  The  modem  "  labor  movement  "  is  the  upward  movement 
of  this  class.  It  began  with  local  and  concrete  issues  that 
pressed  upon  a  given  body  of  workingmen  some  demand  for 
shorter  hours  or  better  wages,  some  grievance  about  fines  or 
docking.  The  trades-unions  were  formed  as  defensive  or- 
ganizations for  collective  action.  It  is  quite  true  that  they 
have  often  been  foolish  and  tyrannical  in  their  demands,  and 
headstrong  and  even  lawless  in  their  actions ;  but  if  we  con- 
sider the  insecurity  and  narrowness  of  the  economic  existence 
of  the  working  people,  and  the  glaring  contrast  between  the 
meagre  reward  for  their  labor  and  the  dazzling  returns  given 
to  invested  capital,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  they  have 
good  cause  for  making  a  strenuous  and  continuous  fight  for 
better  conditions  of  life.  If  Christian  men  are  really  in- 
terested in  the  salvation  of  human  lives  and  in  the  health, 
the  decency,  the  education,  and  the  morality  of  the  people, 
they  must  wish  well  to  the  working  people  in  their  effort  to 
secure  such  conditions  for  themselves  and  their  dear  ones 
that  they  will  not  have  to  die  of  tuberculosis  in  their  prime, 
nor  feel  their  strength  ground  down  by  long  hours  of  work, 

•    nor  see  their  women  and  children  drawn  into  the  merciless 

hopper  of  factory  labor,  nor  be  shut  out  from  the  enjoyment 

of  the  culture  about  them  which  they  have  watered  with  their 

sweat. 

But  the  labor  movement  means  more  than  better  wages 


WHAT   TO    DO  405 

and  shorter  hours  for  individual  workingmen.  It  involves 
the  struggle  for  a  different  status  for  their  entire  class.  Other 
classes  have  long  ago  won  a  recognized  standing  in  law  and 
custom  and  public  opinion  —  so  long  ago  that  they  have  for- 
gotten that  they  ever  had  to  win  it.  For  instance,  the  medical 
profession  is  recognized  by  law;  certain  qualifications  are 
fixed  for  admission  to  it ;  certain  privileges  are  granted  to  those 
inside;  irregular  practitioners  are  hampered  or  suppressed. 
The  clerical  profession  enjoys  certain  exemptions  from  taxa- 
tion, military  service,  and  jury  duty ;  ministers  have  the  right 
to  solemnize  marriages  and  collect  fees  therefore;  railways 
give  them  half  fares,  and  these  privileges  are  granted  to 
those  whom  the  clergy  themselves  ordain  and  admit  to  their 
"closed  shop."  A  lawyer  who  is  admitted  to  the  bar  thereby 
becomes  a  court  officer;  the  bar  association,  which  is  his 
trades-union,  takes  the  initiative  in  disbarring  men  who 
violate  the  class  code,  and  the  courts  take  cognizance  of  its 
action;  in  the  State  of  New  York  the  bar  associations  have 
assumed  some  right  to  nominate  the  judges.  As  for  the  busi- 
ness class,  it  is  so  completely  enthroned  in  our  social  organiza- 
tion that  it  often  assumes  that  it  is  itself  the  whole  of  society. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  working  class  has  no  adequate 
standing  as  yet.  It  did  have  in  the  guilds  of  former  times, 
but  modem  industry  and  modem  law  under  the  laissez-faire 
principle  dissolved  the  old  privileges  and  reduced  the  work- 
ing class  to  a  mass  of  unrelated  human  atoms.  Common 
action  on  their  part  was  treated  in  law  as  conspiracy.  In  our 
country  they  have  not  yet  won  from  their  employers  nor  from 
public  opinion  the  acknowledged  right  to  be  organized,  to 
bargain  collectively,  and  to  assist  in  controlling  the  discipline 
of  the  shops  in  which  they  have  to  work.     The  law  seems  to 


4o6  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

aflford  them  very  little  backing  as  yet.  It  provides  penalties 
for  the  kind  of  injuries  which  workingmen  are  likely  to  inflict 
on  their  employers,  but  not  for  the  subtler  injuries  which 
employers  are  likely  to  inflict  on  their  workingmen.  Few 
will  care  to  assert  that  in  the  bitter  conflicts  waged  between 
labor  and  capital  the  wrong  has  always  been  on  one  side. 
Yet  when  the  law  bares  its  sword,  it  is  somehow  always 
against  one  side.  The  militia  does  not  seem  to  be  ordered 
out  against  capital.  The  labor  movement  must  go  on  until 
public  opinion  and  the  law  have  conceded  a  recognized  posi- 
tion to  the  labor-unions,  and  until  the  workingmen  interested 
in  a  given  question  stand  collectively  on  a  footing  of  equaHty 
with  the  capitalists  interested  in  it.  This  means  a  curtail- 
ment of  power  for  the  employers,  and  it  would  be  contrary  to 
human  nature  for  them  to  like  it.  But  for  the  working  class 
it  would  be  suicidal  to  forego  the  attempt  to  get  it.  They 
have  suffered  fearfully  by  not  having  it.  All  the  sacrifices 
they  may  bring  in  the  chronic  industrial  warfare  of  the  pres- 
ent will  be  cheap  if  they  ultimately  win  through  to  an  assured 
social  and  legal  status  for  their  class. 

As  long  as  the  working  class  simply  attempts  to  better  its 
condition  somewhat  and  to  secure  a  recognized  standing  for 
its  class  organization,  it  stands  on  the  basis  of  the  present 
capitalistic  organization  of  industry.  Capitalism  necessarily 
divides  industrial  society  into  two  classes,  —  those  who  own 
the  instruments  and  materials  of  production,  and  those  who 
furnish  the  labor  for  it.  This  sharp  division  is  the  peculiar 
characteristic  of  modern  capitalism  which  distinguishes  it 
from  other  forms  of  social  organization  in  the  past.  These  two 
classes  have  to  cooperate  in  modern  production.  The  labor 
movement  seeks  to  win  better  terms  for  the  working  class  in 


WHAT   TO    DO  407 

striking  its  bargains.  Yet  whatever  terms  organized  labor 
succeeds  in  winning  are  always  temporary  and  insecure,  like  the 
hold  which  a  wrestler  gets  on  the  body  of  his  antagonist.  The 
persistent  tendency  with  capital  necessarily  is  to  get  labor  as 
cheaply  as  possible  and  to  force  as  much  work  from  it  as  pos- 
sible. Moreover,  labor  is  always  in  an  inferior  position  in  the 
struggle.  It  is  handicapped  by  its  own  hunger  and  lack  of 
resources.  It  has  to  wrestle  on  its  knees  with  a  foeman  who 
is  on  his  feet.  Is  this  unequal  struggle  between  two  con- 
flicting interests  to  go  on  forever?  Is  this  insecurity  the  best 
that  the  working  class  can  ever  hope  to  attain  ? 

Here  enters  socialism.  It  proposes  to  abolish  the  division 
of  industrial  society  into  two  classes  and  to  close  the  fatal 
chasm  which  has  separated  the  employing  class  from  the 
working  class  since  the  introduction  of  power  machinery.  It 
proposes  to  restore  the  independence  of  the  workingman  by 
making  him  once  more  the  owner  of  his  tools  and  to  give  him 
the  full  proceeds  of  his  production  instead  of  a  wage  deter- 
mined by  his  poverty.  It  has  no  idea  of  reverting  to  the  simple 
methods  of  the  old  handicrafts,  but  heartily  accepts  the  power 
machinery,  the  great  factory,  the  division  of  labor,  the  organ- 
ization of  the  men  in  great  regiments  of  workers,  as  estab- 
lished facts  in  modem  life,  and  as  the  most  efficient  method 
of  producing  wealth.  But  it  proposes  to  give  to  the  whole 
body  of  workers  the  ownership  of  these  vast  instruments  of 
production  and  to  distribute  among  them  all  the  entire  pro- 
ceeds of  their  common  labor.  There  would  then  be  no  capi- 
talistic class  opposed  to  the  working  class ;  there  would  be  a 
single  class  which  would  unite  the  qualities  of  both.  Every 
workman  would  be  both  owner  and  worker,  just  as  a  farmer 
is  who  tills  his  own  farm,  or  a  housewife  who  works  in  her  own 


4o8  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

kitchen.  This  would  be  a  permanent  solution  of  the  labor 
question.  It  would  end  the  present  insecurity,  the  constant 
antagonism,  the  social  inferiority,  the  physical  exploitation, 
the  intellectual  poverty  to  which  the  working  class  is  now 
exposed  even  when  its  condition  is  most  favorable. 

If  such  a  solution  is  even  approximately  feasible,  it  should 
be  hailed  with  joy  by  every  patriot  and  Christian,  for  it  would 
put  a  stop  to  our  industrial  war,  drain  off  the  miasmatic  swamp 
of  undeserved  poverty,  save  our  political  democracy,  and  lift 
the  great  working  class  to  an  altogether  different  footing  of 
comfort,  intelligence,  security  and  moral  strength.  And  it 
would  embody  the  principle  of  solidarity  and  fraternity  in 
the  fundamental  institutions  of  our  industrial  life.  All  the 
elements  of  cooperation  and  interaction  which  are  now  at 
work  in  our  great  establishments  would  be  conserved,  and  in 
addition  the  hearty  interest  of  all  workers  in  their  common 
factory  or  store  would  be  immensely  intensified  by  the 
diffused  sense  of  ownership.  Such  a  social  order  would 
develop  the  altruistic  and  social  instincts  just  as  the  com- 
petitive order  brings  out  the  selfish  instincts. 

Socialism  is  the  ultimate  and  logical  outcome  of  the  labor 
movement.  When  the  entire  working  class  throughout  the 
industrial  nations  is  viewed  in  a  large  way,  the  progress  of 
socialism  gives  an  impression  of  resistless  and  elemental 
power.  It  is  inconceivable  from  the  point  of  view  of  that 
class  that  it  should  stop  short  of  complete  independence  and 
equality  as  long  as  it  has  the  power  to  move  on,  and  in- 
dependence and  equality  for  the  working  class  must  mean  the 
collective  ownership  of  the  means  of  production  and  the 
abolition  of  the  present  two-class  arrangement  of  industrial 
society.     If  the  labor  movement  in  our  country  is  only  slightly 


WHAT  TO   DO  409 

tinged  with  socialism  as  yet,  it  is  merely  because  it  is  still  in 
its  embryonic  stages.  Nothing  will  bring  the  working  class 
to  a  thorough  comprehension  of  the  actual  status  of  their 
class  and  its  ultimate  aim  more  quickly  than  continued  fail- 
ure to  secure  their  smaller  demands  and  reactionary  efforts 
to  suppress  their  unions. 

We  started  out  with  the  proposition  that  the  ideal  of  a 
fraternal  organization  of  society  will  remain  powerless  if  it  is 
supported  by  idealists  only;  that  it  needs  the  firm  support 
of  a  solid  class  whose  economic  future  is  staked  on  the  suc- 
cess of  that  ideal;  and  that  the  industrial  working  class  is 
consciously  or  unconsciously  committed  to  the  struggle  for 
the  realization  of  that  principle.  It  follows  that  those  who 
desire  the  victory  of  that  ideal  from  a  religious  point  of  view 
will  have  to  enter  into  a  working  alliance  with  this  class.  Just 
as  the  Protestant  principle  of  religious  liberty  and  the  demo- 
cratic principle  of  political  liberty  rose  to  victory  by  an 
alliance  with  the  middle  class  which  was  then  rising  to  power, 
so  the  new  Christian  principle  of  brotherly  association  must 
ally  itself  with  the  working  class  if  both  are  to  conquer. 
Each  depends  on  the  other.  The  idealistic  movement  alone 
would  be  a  soul  without  a  body;  the  economic  class  move- 
ment alone  would  be  a  body  without  a  soul.  It  needs  the 
high  elation  and  faith  that  come  through  religion.  Nothing 
else  will  call  forth  that  self-sacrificing  devotion  and  Ufe-long 
fidelity  which  will  be  needed  in  so  gigantic  a  struggle  as  lies 
before  the  working  class. 

The  cooperation  of  professional  men  outside  the  working 
class  would  contribute  scientific  information  and  trained  intel- 
ligence. They  would  mediate  between  the  two  classes,  in- 
terpreting each  to  the  other,  and  thereby  lessening  the  strain 


4IO  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

of  hostility.  Their  presence  and  sympathy  would  cheer  the 
working  people  and  diminish  the  sense  of  class  isolation.  By 
their  contact  with  the  possessing  classes  they  could  help  to 
persuade  them  of  the  inherent  justice  of  the  labor  movement 
and  so  create  a  leaning  toward  concessions.  No  other  influ- 
ence could  do  so  much  to  prevent  a  revolutionary  explosion 
of  pent-up  forces.  It  is  to  the  interest  of  all  sides  that  the 
readjustment  of  the  social  classes  should  come  as  a  steady 
evolutionary  process  rather  than  as  a  social  catastrophe.  If 
the  laboring  class  should  attempt  to  seize  political  power 
suddenly,  the  attempt  might  be  beaten  back  with  terrible  loss 
in  efficiency  to  the  movement.  If  the  attempt  should  be  suc- 
cessful, a  raw  governing  class  would  be  compelled  to  handle 
a  situation  so  vast  and  complicated  that  no  past  revolution 
presents  a  parallel.  There  would  be  widespread  disorder 
and  acute  distress,  and  a  reactionary  relapse  to  old  conditions 
would,  by  all  historical  precedents,  be  almost  certain  to  occur. 
It  is  devoutly  to  be  desired  that  the  shifting  of  power  should 
come  through  a  continuous  series  of  practicable  demands  on 
one  side  and  concessions  on  the  other.  Such  an  historical 
process  will  be  immensely  facilitated  if  there  are  a  large 
number  of  men  in  the  professional  and  business  class  with 
whom  religious  and  ethical  motives  overcome  their  selfish 
interests  so  that  they  will  throw  their  influence  on  the  side  of 
the  class  which  is  now  claiming  its  full  rights  in  the  family 
circle  of  humanity. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Christian  idealists  must  not  make  the 
mistake  of  trying  to  hold  the  working  class  down  to  the  use  of 
moral  suasion  only,  or  be  repelled  when  they  hear  the  brute 
note  of  selfishness  and  anger.  The  class  struggle  is  bound 
to  be  transferred  to  the  field  of  politics  in  our  country  in 


WHAT  TO    DO  411 

some  form.  It  would  be  folly  if  the  working  class  failed  to 
use  the  leverage  which  their  political  power  gives  them.  The 
business  class  has  certainly  never  failed  to  use  political  means 
to  further  its  interests.  This  is  a  war  of  conflicting  interests 
which  is  not  likely  to  be  fought  out  in  love  and  tenderness. 
The  possessing  class  will  make  concessions  not  in  brotherly 
love  but  in  fear,  because  it  has  to.  The  working  class  will 
force  its  demands,  not  merely  because  they  are  just,  but 
because  it  feels  it  cannot  do  without  them,  and  because  it  is 
strong  enough  to  coerce.  Even  Bismarck  acknowledged  that 
the  former  indifference  of  the  business  class  in  Germany  to 
the  sufferings  of  the  lower  classes  had  not  been  overcome  by 
philanthropy,  but  by  fear  of  the  growing  discontent  of  the 
people  and  the  spread  of  social  democracy.  Max  Nordau 
meant  the  same  when  he  said,  "In  spite  of  its  theoretical 
absurdity,  socialism  has  already  in  thirty  years  wrought 
greater  amelioration  than  all  the  wisdom  of  statesmen  and 
philosophers  of  thousands  of  years."  All  that  we  as  Chris- 
tian men  can  do  is  to  ease  the  struggle  and  hasten  the  victory 
of  the  right  by  giving  faith  and  hope  to  those  who  are  down, 
and  quickening  the  sense  of  justice  with  those  who  are  in 
power,  so  that  they  will  not  harden  their  hearts  and  hold 
Israel  in  bondage,  but  will  "let  the  people  go."  But  that 
spiritual  contribution,  intangible  and  imponderable  though  it 
be,  has  a  chemical  power  of  immeasurable  efl&ciency. 

We  undertook  in  this  chapter  to  suggest  in  what  ways  the  Summary 
moral  forces  latent  in  Christian  society  could  be  mobilized  argument. 
for  the  progressive  regeneration  of  social  life,  and  in  what 
directions  chiefly  these  forces  should  be  exerted. 

We  saw  that  some  lines  of  effort  frequently  attempted  in 


412  CHRISTIANITY    AND   THE   SOCIAL    CRISIS 

the  past  by  Christian  men  and  organizations  are  useless  and 
misleading.  It  is  fruitless  to  attempt  to  turn  modern  society 
back  to  conditions  prevailing  before  power  machinery  and 
trusts  had  revolutionized  it;  or  to  copy  biblical  institutions 
adapted  to  wholly  different  social  conditions ;  or  to  postpone 
the  Christianizing  of  society  to  the  millennium;  or  to  found 
Christian  communistic  colonies  within  the  competitive  world ; 
or  to  make  the  organized  Church  the  centre  and  manager  of 
an  improved  social  machinery.  The  force  of  religion  can  best 
be  applied  to  social  renewal  by  sending  its  spiritual  power 
along  the  existing  and  natural  relations  of  men  to  direct 
them  to  truer  ends  and  govern  them  by  higher  motives. 

The  fundamental  contribution  of  every  man  is  the  change 
of  his  own  personality.  We  must  repent  of  the  sins  of  exist- 
ing society,  cast  off  the  spell  of  the  lies  protecting  our  social 
wrongs,  have  faith  in  a  higher  social  order,  and  realize  in 
ourselves  a  new  type  of  Christian  manhood  which  seeks  to 
overcome  the  evil  in  the  present  world,  not  by  withdrawing 
from  the  world,  but  by  revolutionizing  it. 

If  this  new  type  of  religious  character  multiplies  among 
the  young  men  and  women,  they  will  change  the  world  when 
they  come  to  hold  the  controlling  positions  of  society  in  their 
maturer  years.  They  will  give  a  new  force  to  righteous  and 
enlightened  public  opinion,  and  will  apply  the  religious  sense 
of  duty  and  service  to  the  common  daily  life  with  a  new  motive 
and  directness. 

The  ministry,  in  particular,  must  apply  the  teaching  func- 
tions of  the  pulpit  to  the  pressing  questions  of  public  morality. 
It  must  collectively  learn  not  to  speak  without  adequate  in- 
formation ;  not  to  charge  individuals  with  guilt  in  which  all 
society  shares;  not  to  be  partial,  and  yet  to  be  on  the  side 


WHAT    TO    DO  413 

of  the  lost ;  not  to  yield  to  political  partisanship,  but  to  deal 
with  moral  questions  before  they  become  political  issues  and 
with  those  questions  of  public  welfare  which  never  do  become 
political  issues.  They  must  lift  the  social  questions  to  a  re- 
ligious level  by  faith  and  spiritual  insight.  The  larger  the 
number  of  ministers  who  attempt  these  untrodden  ways,  the 
safer  and  saner  will  those  be  who  follow.  By  interpreting 
one  social  class  to  the  other,  they  can  create  a  disposition  to 
make  concessions  and  help  in  securing  a  peaceful  settlement 
of  social  issues. 

The  force  of  the  rehgious  spirit  should  be  bent  toward  as- 
serting the  supremacy  of  life  over  property.  Property  exists 
to  maintain  and  develop  life.  It  is  unchristian  to  regard 
human  life  as  a  mere  instrument  for  the  production  of 
wealth. 

The  religious  sentiment  can  protect  good  customs  and 
institutions  against  the  inroads  of  ruthless  greed,  and  extend 
their  scope.  It  can  create  humane  customs  which  the  law 
is  impotent  to  create.  It  can  create  the  convictions  and 
customs  which  are  later  embodied  in  good  legislation. 

Our  complex  society  rests  largely  on  the  stewardship  of 
delegated  powers.  The  opportunities  to  profit  by  the  be- 
trayal of  trust  increase  with  the  wealth  and  complexity  of 
civilization.  The  most  fundamental  evils  in  past  history  and 
present  conditions  were  due  to  converting  stewardship  into 
ownership.  The  keener  moral  insight  created  by  Christian- 
ity should  lend  its  help  in  scrutinizing  all  claims  to  property 
and  power  in  order  to  detect  latent  public  rights  and  to  recall 
the  recreant  stewards  to  their  duty. 

Primitive  society  was  communistic.  The  most  valuable  in- 
stitutions in  modem  life — the  family,  the  school  and  church — 


414  CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

are  communistic.  The  State,  too,  is  essentially  communistic 
and  is  becoming  increasingly  so.  During  the  larger  part  of 
its  history  the  Christian  Church  regarded  communism  as  the 
only  ideal  life.  Christianity  certainly  has  more  affinity  for 
cooperative  and  fraternal  institutions  than  for  competitive 
disunion.  It  should  therefore  strengthen  the  existing  com- 
munistic institutions  and  aid  the  evolution  of  society  from  the 
present  temporary  stage  of  individualism  to  a  higher  form  of 
communism. 

The  splendid  ideal  of  a  fraternal  organization  of  society 
cannot  be  realized  by  idealists  only.  It  must  be  supported  by 
the  self-interest  of  a  powerful  class.  The  working  class,  which 
is  now  engaged  in  its  upward  movement,  is  struggling  to 
secure  better  conditions  of  life,  an  assured  status  for  its  class 
organizations,  and  ultimately  the  ownership  of  the  means  of 
production.  Its  success  in  the  last  great  aim  would  mean 
the  closing  of  the  gap  which  now  divides  industrial  society 
and  the  establishment  of  industry  on  the  principle  of  solidarity 
and  the  method  of  cooperation.  Christianity  should  enter 
into  a  working  alliance  with  this  rising  class,  and  by  its  media- 
tion secure  the  victory  of  these  principles  by  a  gradual  equali- 
zation of  social  opportunity  and  power. 

The  new  The  first  apostolate  of  Christianity  was  bom  from  a  deep 

apos  o  a  e.  fellow-feeling  for  social  misery  and  from  the  consciousness  of 
a  great  historical  opportunity.  Jesus  saw  the  peasantry  of 
Galilee  following  him  about  with  their  poverty  and  their 
diseases,  like  shepherdless  sheep  that  have  been  scattered  and 
harried  by  beasts  of  prey,  and  his  heart  had  compassion  on 
them.  He  felt  that  the  harvest  was  ripe,  but  there  were  few 
to  reap  it.    Past  history  had  come  to  its  culmination,  but 


WHAT    TO    DO  415 

there  were  few  who  understood  the  situation  and  were  pre- 
pared to  cope  with  it.  He  bade  his  disciples  to  pray  for 
laborers  for  the  harvest,  and  then  made  them  answer  their 
own  prayers  by  sending  them  out  two  by  two  to  proclaim  the 
kingdom  of  God.  That  was  the  beginning  of  the  world-wide 
mission  of  Christianity.* 

The  situation  is  repeated  on  a  vaster  scale  to-day.  If 
Jesus  stood  to-day  amid  our  modem  life,  with  that  outlook 
on  the  condition  of  all  humanity  which  observation  and  travel 
and  the  press  would  spread  before  him,  and  with  the  same 
heart  of  divine  humanity  beating  in  him,  he  would  create  a 
new  apostolate  to  meet  the  new  needs  in  a  new  harvest-time 
of  history. 

To  any  one  who  knows  the  sluggishness  of  humanity  to 
good,  the  impregnable  intrenchments  of  vested  wrongs  and  the 
long  reaches  of  time  needed  from  one  milestone  of  progress 
to  the  next,  the  task  of  setting  up  a  Christian  social  order  in 
this  modem  world  of  ours  seems  like  a  fair  and  futile  dream. 
Yet  in  fact  it  is  not  one  tithe  as  hopeless  as  when  Jesus  set 
out  to  do  it.  When  he  told  his  disciples,  "  Ye  are  the  salt  of 
the  earth;  ye  are  the  light  of  the  world,"  he  expressed  the 
consciousness  of  a  great  historic  mission  to  the  whole  of 
humanity.  Yet  it  was  a  Nazarene  carpenter  speaking  to  a 
group  of  Galilaean  peasants  and  fishermen.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances at  that  time  it  was  an  utterance  of  the  most  dar- 
ing faith,  —  faith  in  himself,  faith  in  them,  faith  in  what  he 
was  putting  into  them,  faith  in  faith.  Jesus  failed  and  was 
crucified,  first  his  body  by  his  enemies,  and  then  his  spirit  by 
his  friends ;  but  that  failure  was  so  amazing  a  success  that  to- 
day it  takes  an  effort  on  our  part  to  realize  that  it  required  any 

•  See  Matthew  9.  32-10.  42. 


4l6  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

faith  on  his  part  to  inaugurate  the  kingdom  of  God  and  to 
send  out  his  apostolate. 

To-day,  as  Jesus  looks  out  upon  humanity,  his  spirit  must 
leap  to  see  the  souls  responsive  to  his  call.  They  are  sown 
broadcast  through  humanity,  legions  of  them.  The  harvest- 
field  is  no  longer  deserted.  All  about  us  we  hear  the  clang 
of  the  whetstone  and  the  rush  of  the  blades  through  the 
grain  and  the  shout  of  the  reapers.  With  all  our  faults  and 
our  slothfulness  we  modern  men  in  many  ways  are  more  on  a 
level  with  the  real  mind  of  Jesus  than  any  generation  that 
has  gone  before.  If  that  first  apostolate  was  able  to  remove 
mountains  by  the  power  of  faith,  such  an  apostolate  as  Christ 
could  now  summon  might  change  the  face  of  the  earth. 

The  apostolate  of  a  new  age  must  do  the  work  of  the  sower. 
When  the  sower  goes  forth  to  sow  his  seed,  he  goes  with  the 
certainty  of  partial  failure  and  the  knowledge  that  a  long  time 
of  patience  and  of  hazard  will  intervene  before  he  can  hope 
to  see  the  result  of  his  work  and  his  venture.  In  sowing  the 
truth  a  man  may  never  see  or  trace  the  results.  The  more 
ideal  his  ronreptions  are,  and  the  farther  they  move  ahead  of 
his  time,  the  larger  will  be  the  percentage  of  apparent  failure. 
But  he  can  afford  to  wait.  The  powers  of  life  are  on  his  side. 
He  is  like  a  man  who  has  scattered  his  seed  and  then  goes  off 
to  sleep  by  night  and  work  by  day,  and  all  the  while  the  seed, 
by  the  inscrutable  chemistry  of  life,  lays  hold  of  the  ingredients 
of  its  environment  and  builds  them  up  to  its  own  growth. 
The  mustard-seed  becomes  a  tree.  The  leaven  assimilates 
the  meal  by  biological  processes.  The  new  life  penetrates 
the  old  humanity  and  transforms  it.  Robert  Owen  was  a 
sower.  His  cooperative  communities  failed.  He  was  able  to 
help  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  workingmen  of  his  day.     But 


WHAT  TO   DO  417 

his  moral  enthusiasm  and  his  ideas  fertihzed  the  finest  and 
most  self-sacrificing  minds  among  the  working  classes.  They 
cherished  his  ultimate  hopes  in  private  and  worked  for  realiz- 
able ends  in  public.  The  Chartist  movement  was  filled  with 
his  spirit.  The  most  influential  leaders  of  English  unionism 
in  its  great  period  after  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
were  Owenites.  The  Rochdale  Pioneers  were  under  his  in- 
fluence, and  the  great  cooperative  movement  in  England,  an 
economic  force  of  the  first  importance,  grew  in  some  measure 
out  of  the  seed  which  Owen  had  scattered.  Other  men  may 
own  the  present.  The  future  belongs  to  the  sower  —  pro- 
vided he  scatters  seed  and  does  not  mistake  the  chaff  for  it 
which  once  was  so  essential  to  the  seed  and  now  is  dead  and 
useless. 

It  is  inevitable  that  those  who  stand  against  conditions  in 
which  most  men  believe  and  by  which  the  strongest  profit, 
shall  suffer  for  their  stand.  The  Httle  group  of  early  Chris- 
tian socialists  in  England,  led  by  Maurice,  Kingsley,  and 
Hughes,  now  stand  by  common  consent  in  the  history  of  that 
generation  as  one  of  its  finest  products,  but  at  that  time  they 
were  bitterly  assailed  and  misunderstood.  Pastor  Rudolf 
Todt,  the  first  man  in  Germany  who  undertook  to  prove 
that  the  New  Testament  and  the  ethics  of  socialism  have  a 
close  affinity,  was  almost  unanimously  attacked  by  the  Church 
of  Germany.  But  Jesus  told  his  apostles  at  the  outset  that 
opposition  would  be  part  of  their  day's  work.  Christ 
equipped  his  Church  with  no  legal  rights  to  protect  her ;  the 
only  political  right  he  gave  his  disciples  was  the  right  of  being 
persecuted.^  It  is  part  of  the  doctrine  of  vicarious  atonement, 
which  is  fundamental  in  Christianity,  that  the  prophetic  souls 
*  Nathusiua,  "  Mitarbeit  der  Kirche,"  p.  476. 


41 8  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE    SOCIAL   CRISIS 

must  vindicate  by  their  sufferings  the  truth  of  the  truth  they 
preach, 

"Disappointment's  dry  and  bitter  root, 
Envy's  harsh  berries,  and  the  choking  pool 
Of  the  world's  scorn,  are  the  right  mother-milk 
To  the  tough  hearts  that  pioneer  their  kind 
And  break  a  pathway  to  those  unknown  realms 
That  in  the  earth's  broad  shadow  lie  enthralled; 
Endurance  is  the  crowning  quality. 
And  patience  all  the  passion  of  great  hearts; 
These  are  their  stay,  and  when  the  leaden  world 
Sets  its  hard  face  against  their  fateful  thought, 
And  brute  strength,  like  a  scornful  conqueror, 
Clangs  his  huge  mace  down  in  the  other  scale, 
The  inspired  soul  but  flings  his  patience  in, 
And  slowly  that  outweighs  the  ponderous  globe,  — 
One  faith  against  a  whole  earth's  unbelief. 
One  soul  against  the  flesh  of  all  mankind." ' 

The  championship  of  social  justice  is  almost  the  only  way  left 
open  to  a  Christian  nowadays  to  gain  the  crown  of  martyr- 
dom. Theological  heretics  are  rarely  persecuted  now.  The 
only  rival  of  God  is  mammon,  and  it  is  only  when  his  sacred 
name  is  blasphemed  that  men  throw  the  Christians  to  the 
lions. 

Even  for  the  social  heretics  there  is  a  generous  readiness 
to  listen  which  was  unknown  in  the 'past.  In  our  country  that 
openness  of  mind  is  a  product  of  our  free  intellectual  life, 
our  ingrained  democracy,  the  denominational  manifoldness  of 
our  religious  life,  and  the  spread  of  the  Christian  spirit.  It 
has  become  an  accepted  doctrine  among  us  that  all  great 
movements  have  obscure  beginnings,  and  that  belief  tends  to 

*  James  Russell  Lowell,  "  Columbus." 


WHAT    TO    DO  419 

make  men  respectful  toward  anything  that  comes  from  some 
despised  Nazareth.  Unless  a  man  forfeits  respect  by  bitter- 
ness or  lack  of  tact,  he  is  accorded  a  large  degree  of  tolerance, 
though  he  will  always  be  made  to  feel  the  difference  between 
himself  and  those  who  say  the  things  that  please  the  great. 

The  certainty  of  opposition  constitutes  a  special  call  to  the 
strong.  The  ministry  seems  to  have  little  attraction  for  the 
sons  of  rich  men.  It  is  not  strange  when  one  considers  the 
enervating  trials  that  beset  a  rich  man  in  a  pastorate.  But 
here  is  a  mission  that  ought  to  appeal  to  the  rich  young  man 
if  he  has  heroic  stuff  in  him.  His  assured  social  standing 
would  give  him  an  influence  with  rich  and  poor  alike  which 
others  attain  but  slowly  if  at  all.  The  fear  of  being  black- 
listed for  championing  justice  and  mercy  need  have  no  ter- 
rors for  him.  To  use  his  property  as  a  coat  of  mail  in  fight- 
ing the  battles  of  the  weak  would  be  the  best  way  of  obeying 
Christ's  command  to  the  rich  young  ruler  to  sell  all  and  give 
it  to  the  poor.  When  Mr,  Roosevelt  was  still  Police  Com- 
missioner in  New  York,  he  said  to  the  young  men  of  New 
York:  "I  would  teach  the  young  men  that  he  who  has  not 
wealth  owes  his  first  duty  to  his  family,  but  he  who  has  means 
owes  his  to  the  State.  It  is  ignoble  to  go  on  heaping  up  money. 
I  would  preach  the  doctrine  of  work  to  all,  and  to  the  men  of 
wealth  the  doctrine  of  unremunerative  work."  ^  The  most 
" unremunerative  work"  is  the  work  that  draws  opposition 
and  animosity. 

Mr.  Roosevelt  implies  here  that  a  man 's  duty  to  his  family 

is  the  first  and  dominant  duty,  and  that  this  exempts  him  in 

some  measure  from  service  to  the  larger  public.     It  follows 

that  the  childless  have  a  call  to  the  dangerous  work  of  the 

'  Jacob  A.  Riis,  "Theodore  Roosevelt,  the  Citizen." 


420  CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   CRISIS 

kingdom  of  God.  A  man  and  woman  who  are  feeding  and 
training  young  citizens  are  performing  so  immense  and 
absorbing  a  service  to  the  future  that  they  might  well  be 
exempt  from  taxes  to  the  State  and  from  sacrificial  service  to 
the  kingdom  of  God.  If  nevertheless  so  many  of  them  as- 
sume these  duties  in  addition,  the  childless  man  and  woman 
will  have  to  do  heroic  work  in  the  trenches  before  they  can 
rank  on  the  same  level.  It  is  not  fair  to  ask  a  man  with  chil- 
dren to  give  his  time  and  strength  as  freely  to  public  causes  as 
if  he  had  none.  It  is  still  more  unfair  to  expect  him  to  risk  the 
bread  and  the  prospects  of  his  family  in  championing  danger- 
ous causes  as  freely  as  if  he  risked  only  himself.  The  child- 
less people  should  adopt  the  whole  coming  generation  of  chil- 
dren and  fight  to  make  the  world  more  habitable  for  them 
as  for  their  own  brood.  The  unmarried  and  the  childless 
should  enlist  in  the  new  apostolate  and  march  on  the  forlorn 
hopes  with  Jesus  Christ. 

In  asking  for  faith  in  the  possibility  of  a  new  social  order, 
we  ask  for  no  Utopian  delusion.  We  know  well  that  there 
is  no  perfection  for  man  in  this  life:  there  is  only  growth 
toward  perfection.  In  personal  religion  we  look  with  sea- 
soned suspicion  at  any  one  who  claims  to  be  holy  and  per- 
fect, yet  we  always  tell  men  to  become  holy  and  to  seek  per- 
fection. We  make  it  a  duty  to  seek  what  is  unattainable. 
We  have  the  same  paradox  in  the  perfectibility  of  society. 
We  shall  never  have  a  perfect  social  life,  yet  we  must  seek 
it  with  faith.  We  shall  never  abolish  suffering.  There  will 
always  be  death  and  the  empty  chair  and  heart.  There  will 
always  be  the  agony  of  love  unretumed.  Women  will  long 
for  children  and  never  press  baby  lips  to  their  breast.  Men 
will  long  for  fame  and  miss  it.     Imperfect  moral  insight  will 


WHAT   TO    DO  421 

work  hurt  in  the  best  conceivable  social  order.  The  strong 
will  always  have  the  impulse  to  exert  their  strength,  and  no 
system  can  be  devised  which  can  keep  them  from  crowding 
and  jostling  the  weaker.  Increased  social  refinement  will 
bring  increased  sensitiveness  to  pain.  An  American  may  suffer 
as  much  distress  through  a  social  slight  as  a  Russian  peasant 
under  the  knout.  At  best  there  is  always  but  an  approxima- 
tion to  a  perfect  social  order.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  always 
but  coming. 

But  every  approximation  to  it  is  worth  while.  Every  step 
toward  personal  purity  and  peace,  though  it  only  makes  the 
consciousness  of  imperfection  more  poignant,  carries  its  own 
exceeding  great  reward,  and  everlasting  pilgrimage  toward  the 
kingdom  of  God  is  better  than  contented  stability  in  the  tents 
of  wickedness. 

And  sometimes  the  hot  hope  surges  up  that  perhaps  the 
long  and  slow  climb  may  be  ending.  In  the  past  the  steps  of 
our  race  toward  progress  have  been  short  and  feeble,  and 
succeeded  by  long  intervals  of  sloth  and  apathy.  But  is  that 
necessarily  to  remain  the  rate  of  advance  ?  In  the  intellectual 
life  there  has  been  an  unprecedented  leap  fonvard  during 
the  last  hundred  yeairs.  Individually  we  are  not  more  gifted 
than  our  grandfathers,  but  collectively  we  have  wrought  out 
more  epoch-making  discoveries  and  inventions  in  one  cen- 
tury than  the  whole  race  in  the  untold  centuries  that  have 
gone  before.  If  the  twentieth  century  could  do  for  us  in  the 
control  of  social  forces  what  the  nineteenth  did  for  us  in  the 
control  of  natural  forces,  our  grandchildren  would  live  in  a 
society  that  would  be  justified  in  regarding  our  present  social 
life  as  semi-barbarous.  Since  the  Reformation  began  to  free 
the  mind  and  to  direct  the  force  of  religion  toward  morality, 


422  CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS 

there  has  been  a  perceptible  increase  of  speed.  Humanity 
is  gaining  in  elasticity  and  capacity  for  change  and  every 
gain  in  general  intelligence,  in  organizing  capacity,  in  physical 
and  moral  soundness,  and  especially  in  responsiveness  to  ideal 
motives,  again  increases  the  ability  to  advance  without  dis- 
astrous reactions.  The  swiftness  of  evolution  in  our  own 
country  proves  the  immense  latent  perfectibility  in  human 
nature. 

Last  May  a  miracle  happened.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
week  the  fruit  trees  bore  brown  and  greenish  buds.  At  the 
end  of  the  week  they  were  robed  in  bridal  garments  of  blos- 
som. But  for  weeks  and  months  the  sap  had  been  rising  and 
distending  the  cells  and  maturing  the  tissues  which  were  half 
ready  in  the  fall  before.  The  swift  unfolding  was  the  cul- 
mination of  a  long  process.  Perhaps  these  nineteen  cen- 
turies of  Christian  influence  have  been  a  long  preliminary 
stage  of  growth,  and  now  the  flower  and  fruit  are  almost 
here.  If  at  this  juncture  we  can  rally  sufficient  religious  faith 
and  moral  strength  to  snap  the  bonds  of  evil  and  turn  the 
present  unparalleled  economic  and  intellectual  resources  of 
humanity  to  the  harmonious  development  of  a  true  social  life, 
the  generations  yet  unborn  will  mark  this  as  that  great  day 
of  the  Lord  for  which  the  ages  waited,  and  count  us  blessed 
for  sharing  in  the  apostolate  that  proclaimed  it. 


INDEX 


Adulteration  of  goods,  269. 
Alcoholism, 

"The  Recessional  of  Alcohol,"  238. 

Social  drinking  customs,  376. 
America, 

Our  industrial  revolution,  218,  219. 

SchmoUer,  on  American  plutocracy, 
219. 

Social  equality  a  charm  of  American 
life,  248,  249. 

Growth  of  classes,  250. 

Sympathy  between  rich  and  jx)or,  251. 

The  crumbling  of  democracy,   253- 
264. 

Religious  spirit  of  our  social  move- 
ment, 322,  323. 

Increasing  alienation  of  the  workers 
from  the  Church,  329,  330. 
Amos,  the  prophet,  24,  36. 
Anabaptism,  401,  402. 
Apocalypse  of  John, 

Its  veiled  allusions,  q6. 

Its  revolutionary  essence,  99. 

Its  millennial  hop)e,  105. 

Contains  the  orthodox  eschatology  of 
primitive  Christianity,  106. 

No  reference  to  papal  Rome,  109. 
Apocalypticism, 

Its  origin  and  character,  35,  36. 

Its  visionary  character,  112. 
Apostolate, 

The  first,  414. 

The  boldness  of  its  creation,  415. 

The  new  apostolate,  414-422. 

Its  work  as  a  sower,  416. 

Its  persecution,  417-419. 
Aristotle,  253. 
Asceticism, 

Not  Christian  in  origin,  164. 

Its  influence  on  marriaE;e,  165-167. 

Its  attitude  to  property,  167-170. 


Connection  with  the  idea  of  "merit," 

168. 

Its  stimulus  to  charitable  giving,  169. 

Modern  disappearance  of  it,  204. 

See  also  "  Monasticism." 
Assyrian  Power,  24. 
Athanasian  Creed,  178. 

Barnabas,  Epistle  of,  178. 
Bible, 

New  comprehension  through  the  re- 
vival of  learning,  45. 

New  social  interpretation,  45,  208. 

Blurring  of  its  social  contents,   102, 
196,  197. 

Misuse  of  its  social  contents,  345. 
Bismarck,  411. 
Brook  Farm,  353. 
Brooks,  John  Graham,  351. 

Capitalism, 

Its  fictions,  350. 

Its  two-class  system,  406,  407. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  338,  339. 
Carnegie,  Andrew,  379. 
Catholic  Church,  Roman,  its  influence 

against  democracy,  192. 
Ceremonialism,  Religious, 

In  primitive  religions,  4. 

OppKJsed   by   the   Hebrew   prophets, 

S-7- 
Christ's  indifference  to  it,  71-73. 
Relapse  of  Christianity  to  it,  176,  177. 
Its    paralyzing    influence    on   ethical 

force,  177. 
Weakening  of  it  in  modem  life,  205. 
Childless,  The  social  duty  of  the,  419. 
Christ,  see  Jesus 
Church,  The  Christian, 
Its  failure  to  accomplish  social  recon- 
struction, 143-210. 


423 


424 


INDEX 


Its  victory  in  the  ancient  world,  143. 

Its  power  in  the  Middle  Ages,  144. 

Its  influence  in  modern  life,  145. 

Its  social  effects,  147. 

Their  exaggeration,   148,  149. 

Unintentional  character  of  its  effects, 
ISO. 

The  theory  of  indirectness,  150-152. 

The  churchUness  of  Christianity,  1 79- 
186. 

The  churchliness  of  Christian  ethics, 
180-181. 

Substituted  for  the  kingdom  of  God, 
181,  182. 

Absorbing  Christian  beneficence,  182, 
and  organizing  ability,  183. 

Disparaging  services  to  the  State,  183. 

Its  conflicts  for  its  own  supremacy, 
184. 

Permanent  value  of  the  Church,  185. 

Early  democracy  of  its  organization, 
190,  and  the  influence  of  the  Em- 
pire on  it,  191. 

Reciprocal  relation  between  Church 
and  State,  192,  193. 

Ignorance  of  scientific  sociology,  194- 
198. 

Diminution  of  churchliness,  206. 

Tendency  toward  democratic  or- 
ganization, 208. 

Its  stake  in  the  social  movement,  287- 
342. 

Land  prices  and  Church  extension, 
288,  289. 

The  shifting  of  population,  290,  291. 

The  income  of  the  modern  Church, 
291-298. 

Withdrawal  of  the  poor,  293,  294. 

Influence  of  rich  members,  294,  295. 

Segregation  of  the  rich,  295,  296. 

Denominational  importance  of  rich 
givers,  296,  297. 

Influence  of  Church  finances  on  con- 
stitution and  doctrine,  298. 

The  Church  and  poverty,  304,  305. 

The  institutional  Church,  304,  305. 

The  Church  and  its  human  material, 
305-308. 

The  Church  and  the  working  class, 
319-331- 


Attitude  to  strikes  and  violence,  324- 

329- 
The  forward  call  in  the  present  crisis, 

332-342. 
Not  the  sole  agent  or  beneficiary  x)f 

the  social  movement,  347. 
Absorption  of  religious  energy,  354, 

355- 
Ideal  relation  of  Church  and  State, 

380. 
Its    teaching    on    stewardship,    387, 

388. 
Its  possible  alliance  with  the  working 

class,  409-411. 
Civilization, 

Decay    of    past     civilizations,     279, 

280. 
Decay  of  Grasco-Roman  civihzation, 

280-283. 
Causes  for   the   decline   of   nations, 

284. 
Coming  of  the  Lord,  Second, 
Intensity  of  the  expectation,  103. 
Its  social  significance,  103. 
Paul's  spiritualizing  view,  104. 
The  hope   of  the   millennium,    105; 

its  disappearance,    106;    its  social 

contents,     106;     its    revolutionary 

character,  108-111. 
Disturbing  influence  at  Thessalonica, 

133- 
Postponement  of  social  emancipation, 

153-155.  202,  345. 
Modern  millennialism,  202. 
Commercialism,    its    ethics    hostile    to 

Christianity,  308-317. 
Communism, 

Primitive  communism  in  land,  14-16, 

221. 
Christian  communism  at  Jerusalem, 

120-123. 
Monastic  communism,  170. 
Our    homestead    system    a   form    of 

land  communism,  223. 
Communistic  colonies  no  solution  of 

the  social  question,  346. 
Long  the  Christian  ideal,  388. 
The    earliest    basis    of    civilization, 

388. 
Not  abandoned  as  inefficient,  389. 


INDEX 


425 


The  home,  the  schcx)!,  and  the  Church 

as  communistic  institutions,  390. 
The  State  communistic  in  its  nature, 

391-393- 

Historical   progress  toward  commu- 
nism, 391-395. 

Not  incompatible  with  private  prop- 
erty, 396. 

Affinity  of  Christianity,  397-400. 
Consumption,  Engel's  law  of,  292. 
Courts, 

Control  of,  258. 

Question  of  their  integrity,  259. 
Covetousness,    fostered  by  competitive 

commerce,  265. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  254. 
Customs, 

Creation  of,  372-377. 

Beyond  the  law,  373-375. 

Democracy, 

In  early  Israel,  13-14,  16-17. 

Church  democracy,  190,  208. 

The    crumbling    of    democracy    in 
America,  253-264. 

Conditioned    by   economic   equality, 
254,  262. 

Corroded  by  capitalism,  254-256. 
Demons,  early  Christian  belief  in  them, 

156,  157- 
Desmoulins,  Camille,  89. 
Dives  and  Lcizarus,  Parable  of,  80. 
Dogma, 

Its  deflecting  influence,  178,  179. 

Regarded   as  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity, 178. 

Diminution  of  dogmatism,  206. 

EUjah  and  Ahab,  17. 
Eliot,  President,  236. 
Ely,  R.  T.,  213,  292. 
Engel,  Ernst,  his  law  of  consumption, 

292. 
Equality, 

The  basis  of  morality,  247,  248. 

Social     equality     compatible     with 
natural  inequality,  248. 

A  charm  of  American  life,  248,  and 
now  disappearing,  249. 

Division  into  classes,  250. 


Failure   of   sympathy   between    rich 
and  p)oor,  251,  252. 

Theories  justifying  inequality,  253. 

Economic  equaUty  the  condition  of 
democracy,  254,  262. 

Unequal  distribution  of  wealth,  263. 
Eschatology,  see  "Coming  of  the  Lord." 
Evangelicahsm,    its   lack   of   prophetic 

power,  338. 
Evangelization,  social,  352-357. 
Ezekiel,  30,  37. 

Family,  The,  271-279. 

The  basis  of  society,  271,  272. 

Decrease  of  marriages,  272. 

Evils  of  involuntary  celibacy,  272. 

Increasing  childlessness,  273;   caused 
by  economic  fear,  273,  274. 

The  sterility  of  the  best,  274. 

The    decrease    of    home    influences, 
275,  and  of  home  ownership,  276. 

See  "Marriage." 
Francis,  of  Assisi,  76,  93. 
Future  Life,  see  "Immortality." 

Galiani,  353. 
Gambling,  266. 
Garibaldi,  337. 
George,  Henry,  289,  354. 
Gilman,  N.  P.,  239. 

Hague  Tribunal,  378,  379. 

Harnack,  Professor,  112,  132,  156,  298. 

Harte,  Bret,  270. 

Hase,  Karl,  author  of  the  first  scientific 

life  of  Christ,  46. 
Heath,  Richard,  298,  329. 
Hebrews, 

Primitive  democracy,  13-14. 

Humane  laws,  20-21. 

Hebrew  Prophets,  see  "Prophets." 
Hiibmaier,  Balthasar,  401. 
Hunter,  Robert,  247. 
Hymnology,     Christian,    lack     of    the 

social  hope,  163. 

Immortality, 

Absence  of  the  belief  in  Israel,  17-18. 
Intense   hope   for   it   in   the   Greek 
world,  107,  160-163. 


426 


INDEX 


The  individual  and  ascetic  character 

of  the  hope,  162,  163. 
Its  prevalence  in  the  hymns  of  the 

Church,  163. 
Its  influence  on  social  conduct,  164. 
Diminution  of  other-worldliness,  203. 
Individualism,  Religious,  27-32. 
Influence  of  Jeremiah,  27. 
A  decline  in  religion,  29-30. 
Industrial  Revolution,  213-220. 

Failure   of   the   moral   forces   in   it, 

218. 
Mitigation  of  its  effects  in  Europe, 

218. 
Its  late  effects  in  America,  218,  219. 
Institutions,  their  creation  by  religion, 

377-379- 
Isaiah, 

Political  insight,  9. 
His  offer  of  pardon,  10. 

James,  Epistle  of,  its  social  spirit,  98. 
Jesus, 

The  social  aims  of,  44-92. 

First  scientific  life,  by  Hase,  46. 

Not  a  social  reformer,  46-48. 

Not  merely  a  teacher  of  morality,  47, 
48. 

His  relation  to  John  the  Baptist,  49, 

52- 
His  relation  to  the  prophets,  53. 
His  purpose:    the   kingdom  of  God, 

54-66.     See  "Kingdom  of  God." 
His  ethics,  67-71. 
His  sociability,  69. 
His  indifference  to  ritual,  71-73. 
His  teaching  on  wealth,  74-82. 
His  parable  of  the  steward,  78-80. 
Parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus,  80. 
Luke's  report  of  his  social  teachings, 

80-82. 
His  sympathy  with  the  poor,  82-85. 
His  revolutionary  consciousness,  85- 

91. 
His  attitude  to  the  religious  leaders, 

86;   to  the  civil  authorities,  86;   to 

taxation,  87. 
The  fundamental  epoch  in  history, 

112. 
Teaching  on  stewardship,  381. 


His  faith  in  creating  the  apostolate, 

414-415- 
Jewish  Christianity, 

Its  early  importance,  loi. 
Disappearance  of  its  literature,  98- 

102. 
Its  social  spirit,  98-101. 
John  the  Baptist, 
The  beginner  of  the  Christian  move- 
ment, 49. 
A  successor  of  the  Hebrew  prophets, 

49. 
His  definition  of  repentance,  50. 
The  restoration  of  the  theocracy  his 

aim,  51. 
The  cause  of  his  death,  52. 
The  attitude  of  Jesus  to  him,  53. 
Jubilee,  Year  of,  22. 
Judaism,  Post-Exilic,  31. 

Kautsky,  Karl,  133. 
Kautzsch,  Professor,  11. 
Kingdom  of  God, 

The  centre  of  Christ's  teaching,  54. 

Disappearance  of  the  idea,  55. 

Various  contemporary  conceptions  of 
it.  56. 

Christ's    adoption    and   modification 
of  the  idea,  57-64. 

Always  a  social  hop)e,  65,  66. 

Its  relation  to  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  67- 

71- 
Kingsley,  Charles,  271,  417. 

Land,  The, 

Its  distribution  fundamental  in  na- 
tional life,  220,  221,  229. 

Our  American  land  system,  221. 

Primitive  communism  in  land,  14-17, 
221. 

Influence  of  Roman  law,  222,  223. 

Our  homestead  system,  223. 

Future   of  our   farming   population, 
224,  225. 

Mining  lands,  226. 

City  land  and  its  value,  226-229. 

Land  robbery,  230. 

Influence  of  land  prices  on  Church 
life,  288    289. 
Laveleye,  Emile  de,  89,  192,  193,  357. 


INDEX 


427 


Law,  limited  influence  of,  373-375. 
Law,  The  Hebrew, 

Relation  to  the  prophets,  18. 

Sanction  of  slavery,  19. 

On  the  land,  19-20. 

Its  humanity,  20-21. 
Lawson,  Sir  Wilfred,  247. 
Laymen, 

Lay  workers  in   the    Church,    299, 
300. 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  254. 
Longfellow's     "The     Village     Black- 
smith," 216. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  89,  418. 
Luke,  his  report  of  the  social  teachings 

of  Christ,  80-82. 
Luther,  325,  333,  334 
Luxurj-,  stimulated  by  unearned  wealth, 

267,  268. 

Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  351. 
Machinery, 

First  effects   of  its  invention,   214- 
218. 

Its  importance  in  industrial  society, 
230. 

Controlled  by  a  small  class,  231. 
Marriage, 

Disturbing  influence  of  early  Chris- 
tianity on  it,  135. 

Influence  of  asceticism,  165-167. 

See  "The  Family." 
Mathews,  Shailer,  44. 
Maurice,  Frederick  Denison,  271,  417. 
Mercantile  Inspection  Law,  256,  261. 
Militarism,  350. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  233. 
Millennium,  see  "Coming  of  the  Lord." 
Mining, 

Anthracite  mines,  226. 

Mining  rights  in  the  nature  of  a  pub- 
lic franchise,  386. 
Ministry,  The, 

Recruited  from  the  middle  class,  301. 

Its  spirit  impaired,  301,  302. 

Its  honor  lessened,  302. 

Ministers  as  proletarians,  302. 

Exit  from  the  ministry  difficult,  303. 

Its  teaching  on  social  questions,  357- 
369- 


Missions,  Foreign, 
Impeded  by  our  social  evils,  317,  318. 
Their    inspiration    to    the    Church, 
336. 
Monasticism,  170-175. 

Its  effort  to  establish  ideal  communi- 
ties, 170. 
Its  absorption  of  organizing  ability, 

171.  174- 
Its  beneficent  social  effects,  171,  and 

their  unintentional  character,  172. 
Its  isolation  of  the  best  characters, 

173- 
Its  drain  on  civil  society,  173 
Sterilizing  of  the  best  individuals,  174. 
Modern  disappearance  of  it,  204. 
See  also  "Asceticism." 
Moody,  Dwight  L.,  337. 

Nero,  no. 

Netherlands,  The,  335. 

Nicholas,  Czar,  378. 

Nietzsche,  F.,  315. 

Nineteenth  Century,  a  parable  of  its 

failure,  21 1-2 13. 
Nordau,  Max,  411. 

Owen,  Robert,  416. 

Parks,  Public,  377. 
Paul, 

His  preponderance  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, 102. 

His  social  conservatism,  102. 

Lack  of  the  millennial  hope  in  his 
programme,  104. 

His  attitude  to  the  Empire,  no. 

Attitude  to  slavery,  153. 
Peabody,  Francis  G.,  44. 
Pessimism    of    the    Hebrew    prophets, 

36-41. 
Phihps,  Stephen,  379. 
Poverty, 

Its  permanent  causes,  213. 

Origin  of  modern  poverty,  214. 

Character  created  by,  306. 

Religious  lethargy  of,  307. 
Primitive  Christianity, 

Its  social  impetus,  93-142. 

Its  failure  to  understand  Jesus,  93-95. 


428 


INDEX 


Limitations  of  our  information  about 

it,  95-103- 
Concealment  of  its  social  hope,  95,  96. 
Disappearance  of  its  literature,  96. 
Hostility  to  the  Roman  Empire,  109- 

II r.   136-139.   155-157,   203- 
Political  consciousness  of,  111-116. 
Its  society-making  force,  116-120. 
Raising  the  moral  standard,  117. 
Intensity  of  its  fellowship,  118. 
Its  churches  as  social   communities, 

119-133- 

Its  common  meals,  123-125. 

Social  use  of  its  income,  125,  126. 

Social  character  of  its   Church   offi- 
cers, 126-129. 

Its  charitable  helpfulness,   129-133. 

Its  democratic  leaven,  133-140. 

Impossibility     of     a    social     propa- 
ganda, 152,  153,  201. 

Its  moral  limitations  and  their  per- 
petuation, 158-160. 
Property,  see  "Wealth." 
Prophetism, 

Rise  of,  23,  337. 

Influence  of  the  Philistine  War,  23. 
Prophets,  Hebrew,  1-43. 

Not  antiquated,  i. 

Present  influence,  2-3. 

Their  religion  ethical,  4-8. 

Protest  against  ritual  reUgion,  5. 

Public  interests,  8-1 1,  22. 

Political  influence,  9. 

Sympathy  with  the  poor,  11-22. 

Spiritual  evolution,  22-27. 

Their   hope   of   national   perfection, 

Their  ideal  not  Utopian,  33,  34. 
The  descent   to  apocalypticism,  35, 

36. 

Their  pessimism,  36-41. 

The  "false  prophets,"  38. 

Their  ideals  realized  by  others,  40. 

Their  rise  above  soothsaying,  337. 
Public  opinion. 

Its  untrustworthiness,  260. 

Tampering    with    its    organs,    260, 
261. 
Pulpit,  The,  and  the  social  question, 

357-369- 


Reformation,  The,  333,  334. 
Repentance, 

Social,  349-352. 
Return  of  the  Lord,  see  "  Coming  of  the 

Lord." 
Riis,  Jacob  A.,  255. 
Ritualism,  see  "Ceremonialism." 
Roberts,  Evan,  337. 
Rochester,  N.Y., 

Proportion   of   unmarried   men   and 
women,  272. 

Proportion  of  homes  owned,  276. 
Rogers,  Thorold,  233. 
Roman  Empire, 

Hostility  of  primitive  Christianity  to 
it,  109-111,  136-139,  155-157,  203. 

Paul's  attitude  to,  no. 

The  Empire  and  the  Church,  114. 

Impossibility    of    a    Christian    social 
propaganda,  152,  201. 

Christian  opposition  to  its  morality, 

155- 
Believed  to  be  under  demon  powers, 

156,  157- 
See  also  "The  State." 
Roman  Law,  21. 
Rome,  Burning  of,  no,  in. 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  255,  378,  386,  419. 
Ruler,  The  rich  young,  75-78. 

The  story  in  the  Gospel  according  to 
the  Hebrews,  100. 

SacramentaUsm,  see  "Ceremonialism." 

Savonarola,  335. 

Schiller,  Hermann,  historian  of  Rome, 

132. 
Second  Coming,  see  "Coming  of  the 

Lord." 
Slavery, 

Social   unrest   among   the   Christian 
slaves,  135. 

Impossibihty  of  an  anti-slavery  agi- 
tation, 152,  153. 

Paul's  attitude  to  emancipation,  153. 
Smith,  George  Adam,  24,  26,  43. 
Spahr,  Charles  B.,  263. 
Socialism,    the  logical  outcome   of  the 

labor  movement,  406-409. 
Sociology, 

Lack  of  it  in  the  past,  194-198. 


INDEX 


429 


Modern  scientific  comprehension,  208. 
State,  The, 

Subservience  of  the  Church  to  the, 

186-190. 
The  representative  of  things  as  they 

are,  186. 
Ideal  relation  of  the  Church  to  the 

State,  186,  380. 
Their   historical   relation,    183,    184, 

187,  192.  193. 
Exclusion  of  the  people  from  govern- 
ment, 188-190. 
Primitive  Christian  hostility  to,  log- 
in, 136-139,  155-157,  203. 
Modern  attitude  to  it,  203. 
Modern  separation  of   Church  and 

State,  207. 
State  control  of  corporations,  386. 
See  also  "Roman  Empire." 
Steward,  Parable  of  the,  78-80. 
Stewardship, 

Jesus'  teaching  on,  381. 
Prevalence  in  complex  society,  382. 
Historical  cases  of  abuse  of  steward- 
ship, 383,  384. 
Modern  "grafting,"  383-386. 
Stocker,  Pastor  Adolf,  370. 
Strikes, 

Their  number,  239. 
Hatred  bred  by  them,  239. 
Attitude  of  the  Church  in,  324-329. 
Strike-breaking,  326. 
Sweden,  335. 

Taxation, 

Attitude  of  Jesus  to,  87. 

Inequality  of,  256-258. 
Thomson,  W.  M.,  84. 
Tithing,  292. 
Todt,  Pastor  Rudolf,  417. 

Verestchagin,  350. 

Wages, 

The  downward  movement  in  poverty, 

231. 
Their  purchasing  power,   and  their 
justice,  232,  233. 
War,  350. 
Wealth, 

Christ's  teaching  on,  74-82. 


Its  dangers.  74,  75. 

Case  of  the  young  ruler,  75-78. 

Unequal  distribution  of,  263. 

The  Christian  conception  of,  369-372. 

Stewardship  of,  380-388. 

Its    duty    of    unremunerative  work, 
419- 
Welsh  revival,  337. 
Wiclif,  John,  334. 
Woman, 

The  disturbing  sense  of  Christian 
equality,  134. 

Her  economic  condition,  276,  277. 

Her  physical  exploitation,  277. 

Her  moral  danger,  278. 
Workers,  The, 

Influence  of  work  on  character,  234. 

Lack  of  pride  and  interest,  234,  235. 

Fear,  their  only  motive,  235. 

Insecurity  in  age,  236. 

Their  retained  wages,  236. 

The  degradation  of  charity,  238. 

Corruption  in  times  of  crisis,  238. 

Hatred  created  by  strikes,  238,  239. 

Their  physical  decline,  239-247. 

Congestion  in  the  cities,  240. 

Rise  in  their  food  prices,  240. 

Consumption  of  their  energy,  241. 

Their  mutilation  by  industrial  acci- 
dents, 243-246. 

Increase  of  chronic  poverty,  246,  247. 

The  Church  and  the  working  class, 

319-331- 
ReUgious  nature  of  their  movements, 

319- 

Indifference  and  hostility  to  the 
Church,  320-322,  329-331. 

Class  feeUng  in  strikes,  326-329. 

The  upward  movement  of  the  work- 
ing class,  400-414. 

Relation  of  idealists  to  their  move- 
ment, 400. 

The  need  of  a  class  movement,  401- 
404. 

A  legal  status  for  labor  organizations, 
405. 

Socialism  the  outcome  of  the  labor 
movement,  406-409. 

Danger  of  a  premature  social  catas- 
trophe, 410. 


TOUCHING  THE  RELATIONS  OF  CHRIST 
TO  OUR  MODERN  LIFE 

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and  Buddha. 


By  HENRY   S.    NASH 

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CHRIST 

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By  NEWELL   DWIGHT   HILLIS 

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THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHRIST  IN  MODERN  LIFE 

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